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J

LECTUEE8

ON THE

ENGLISH POETS,

AND THE

ENGLISH COMIC WEITEES.

r\

a ^

n

LECTUR^ •ili'jj

ON THE

ENGLISH POETS,

AND THE

ENGLISH COMIC WEITEES

\

BY

WILLIAM HAZLITT,

Author of ** Table Talk, or Essays on Men and Mattsurs;** ** Euays om

the Literature of the Age of EUxabeth ;" " Characters of

Shakspeare's Plays, 6»c., A^. A^."

A NEW EDITION,

BDITBD BY

WILLIAM CAREW HAZLITT.

LONDON : GEORGE BELL AND SONS, YORK STREET,

COVENT GARDEN.

1876.

\

LONDON:

PRTNTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS,

aTAMPOID (ITRKRT ANO CHA1UVO CHOW.

\

V.

NOTICE.

- " ♦

A SUFFICIENTLY ftill account of these two courses of

. Lectures, and of the circumstances under which they

were originally delivered, upwards of fifty years since,

i may be found in the Memoirs of William Hazliit, 1867,

•• 2 vols., 8vo. The present republication is a faithful

copy of the Author's Editions, which appeared, the

English Poets in 18 18, and the English Comic Writers

in 18 1 9. Of the former a second impression was

printed in 18 19.

W. C. H.
JCensingtoHy July^ 1869.

CONTENTS.

THE ENGLISH POETS.

On Poetry in General .
^On Chaucer and Spenser
\ On Shakspeare and Milton
^X)n Dryden and Pope .
On Thomson and Cowper

On Writers of Pastoral

• #
On Gay, Swift, Young,

Collins ....

On Chatterton

On Bums

and

On the Old English Ballads

X

* On the Modem Poets .

PAGB
I

26

"3

i3«
165
171

185
190

THE COMIC WRITERS.

PAGB

Introductory. — On Wit and
Humour i

On Shakspeare and Ben Jonson 37 '^

On Cowley, Butler, Suckling,
&c 63

On Wycherley, Congreve, Van-
brugh, and Farquhar* . . 91

On Periodical Essayists

. 121

_X

/'

On the English Novelists . .142

On the Works of Hogarth . .181

The Comic Writers of the last
. Century 205 ,

X

r

f

\

LECTUKES

OHT THE

ENGLISH POETS.

•*o^

LECTUEE L— INTRODUCTORY.

ON POETBY IN OBNEBAL.

The best general notion wluch I can give of poetry ia^
that it is the natural impression of any object or eyent, by
its yiyidness exciting an involuntary movement of ima-
gination and passion^ and producing, by sympathy, a cer-
tain modulation of the voice, or sounds, expressing it.

In treating of poetry, I shall speak first of the subject-
matter of it^ next of the forms of expression to which it
gives birth, and afterwards of its connection with harmony
of soimd.

Poetry is me language ot tne imagination and the
passions. It relates to whatever gives immediate pleasure
or pain to the human mind. It comes home to the bosoms
and businesses of men ; for nothing but what so comes
home to them in the most general and intelligible shape can
be a subject for poetry. Poetry is the universal language
which the heart holds with nature and itself. He who has
a contempt for poetry cannot have much respect for himself,
or for anything else. It is not a mere frivolous accomplish-^
ment (as some persons have been led to imagine), the
trifling amusement of a few idle readers or leisure hours :

B

r

r

2 On Poetry in General.

it has been the study and delight of mankind in all ages.
Many people suppose that poetry is something to be found
only in books, contained in lines of ten syllables with like
endings : but wherever there is a sense of beauty, or power,
or harmony, as in the motion of a wave of the sea, in the
growth of a flower that " spreads its sweet leaves to the
air, and dedicates its beauty to the sun," — tJiere is poetry,
in its birth. If history is a grave study, poetry may be
said to be a graver: its materials lie deeper, and are
spread wider. History treats, for the most part, of the
cumbrous and unwieldy masses of things, the empty
cases in which the affiiirs of the world are packed, under
the heads of intrigue or war, in different states, and from
century to century : but there is no thought or feeling
that can have entered into the mind of man, which he
would be eager to communicate to others, or which they
would listen to with delight, that is not a fit subject for
poetry. It is not a branch of authorship : it is " tibe stuff
of which our life is made." The rest is " mere oblivion,"
a dead letter : for all that is worth remembering in life is
the poetry of it. Fear is poetry, hope is poetry, love is
poetry, hatred is poetry; contempt, jealousy, remorse,
admiration, wonder, pity, despair, or madness, are all
poetry. Poetry is that fine particle within us, that ex-
pands, rarefies, refines, raises our whole being : without it
*' man's life is poor as beast's." Man is a poetical animal :
and those of us who do not study the principles of poetry,
act upon them all our lives, like Moliere's Bourgeois GentH-
homme, who had always Bpoken prose without knowing it.
The child is a poet, in-fetct, when he first plays at Hide-
and-seek, or repeats the story of Jack the Giant-killer;
the shepherd-boy is a poet when he first crowns his mis-
tress with a garland of flowers ; the countryman, when he
stops to look at the rainbow ; the city apprentice, when he
gazes after the Lord Mayor's show ; the miser, ijf^en he
hugs his gold ; the courtier, who builds his hopes upon a

/

On Poetry in Oeneral. 3

smile; the savage, who paints his idol with blood; the
filave, who worships a tyrant ; or the tyrant, who fancies
himseK a god; the vain, the ambitious, the proud, the
choleric man, the hero and the coward, the beggar
and the king, the rich and the poor, the young and the
old, all live in a world of their own making ; and the
poet 'does no more than describe what all the others think
and act. If his art is folly and madness, it is folly and
madness at second hand. " There is warrant for it." Poets
alone have not " such seething brains, such shaping fan-
tasies, that apprehend more than cooler reason " can.

" The lunatic, the lover, and the poet
Are of imagination all compact.
One sees more devils than vast hell can hold,
That is, the madman : the lover, all as frantic,
Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt.
The poefs eye, in a fine frenzy roUing,
Doth glance from heaVn to earth, from earth to heaVn ;
And, as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shape, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.
Such tricks hath strong imagination." *

If poetry is a dream, the business of life is much the
same. If it is a fiction, made up of what we wish things
to be, and fancy that they are, because we wish them so,
there is no other nor better reality. Ariosto has described
the loves of Angelica and Medoro : but was not Medoro,
who carved the name of his mistress on the barks of trees,
as much enamoured of her charms as he? Homer has
celebrated the anger of Achilles :. but was not the hero as
mad as the poet ? Plato banished the poets from his Com*
monwealth, lest their descriptions of the natural man should
spoil his mathematical man, who was to be without passions
and affections — ^who was neither to laugh nor weep, to feel
sorrow nor anger, to be cast dowm nor elated by anything.

♦ " A Midsummer Night's Dream," v. 1. — ^Ed.^

/

-V

4 On Poetry in Oenercd,

This was a chimera, however, which never existed but in
the brain of thQ inventor ; and Homer's poetical world has
outlived Plato's philosophical Kepublic.

Poetry then is an imitation of nature, but the imagina-
tion and the passions are a part of man's nature. We
shape things according to our w ishes a nd fancies, without
poetry ; but poetry is the most emphatical language that
can be found for those creations" of the mind "which
e cstasy is very cunning in." Neither a mere description
of natural objects, nor a mere delineation of natural feel-
I ings, however distinct or forcible, constitutes the ultimate
y end and aim of poetry, without the heightenings of the
imagination. The light of poetry is not only a direct but
also a reflected light, that while it shows us the object,
throws a sparkling radiance on all around it : the flame of
the passions, conmiunicated to the imagination, reveals to
us, as with a flash of lightning, the inmost recesses of
thought, and penetrates our whole being. Poetry repre-
sents forms chiefly as they suggest other forms : feelings,
as they suggest forms or other feelings. Poetry puts a
spirit of life and motion into the universe. It describes
the flowing, not the flxed. It does not define the limits of
sense, or analyse the distinctions of the understanding,
but signifies the excess of the imagination beyond the
actual or ordinary impression of any object or feeling.
The poetical impression of any object is that uneasy,
exquisite sense of beauty or power that cannot be con-
tained within itself, that is impatient of all limit, that
(as flame bends to flame) strives to link itself to some
other image of kindred beauty or grandeur, to enshrine
itself, as it were, in the highest forms of fancy, and to
relieve the aching sense of pleasure by expressing it in
the boldest manner, and by the most striking examples of
the same quality in other instances. Poetry, according to
Lord Bacon, for this reason " has something divine in it,
bocause it raises the mind and hurries it into sublimity,

/ i

On Poetry in General. 5

by conforming the shows of things to the desires of the
soul, instead of subjecting the soul to external things, as
reason and history do." It is strictly the language of the
imagination ; and the imagination is that faculty which
represents objects, not as they are in themselves, but as
they are moulded by other thoughts and feelings, into an
in£mte variety of shapes and combinations of power. This
language is not the less true to nature, because it is false
in point of fact ; but so much the more true and natural,
if it conveys the impression which the object under the
influence of passion laakes on the mind. Let an object,
for instance, be| presented to the senses in a state of agita-
tion or fear, and the imagination will distort or ma^iify
the object, and convert it into the likeness of whatever
is most proper to encourage the fear. " Our eyes are made
the fools " of our other faculties. This is tiie universal
law of the imagination :

** That if it would but apprehend some joy,
It comprehends some bringer of that joy :
Or in the night imagining some fear,
How easy is each bush suppos'd a bear !"

When lachimo says of Imogen :

" The flame o' th' taper

Bows toward her, and would under-peep her lids
To see the enclosed lights" —

this passionate interpretation of the motion of the flame,
to accord with the speaker's own feelings, is true poetry.
The lover, equally with the poet, speaks of the auburn
tresses of his mistress as locks of shining gold, because
the least tinge of yellow in the hair has, from novelty and
a sense of personal beauty, a more lustrous effect to the
imagination than the purest gold. We compare a man of
gigantic stature to a tower : not that he is anything like
fio large, but because the excess of his size beyond what
we are accustomed to expect, or the usual size of things of

t

V

6 On Poetry in General.

the same class, produces by contrast a greater feeling of
magnitude and ponderous strength than another object of
ten times the same dimensions. The intensity of the
feeling makes up for the disproportion of the objects.
Things are equal to the imagination, which have the
power of affecting the mind with an equal degree of terror,
admiration, delight, or love. When Lear calls upon the
heavens to avenge his cause, " for they are old like him,"
th^e is nothing extravagant or impious in this sublime
identification of his age with theirs ; for there is no other
image which could do justice to the agonising sense of
his wrongs and his despair I

Poetry is the high-wrought enthusiasm of feuicy and
feeling. As in describing natural objects, it impregnates
sensible impressions with the forms of fancy, so it de-
scribes the feelings of pleasure or pain, by blending them
with the strongest movements of passion, and the most
striking forms of nature. \/ Tragic poetry, which is the
' most impassioned species of it, strives to carry on the
feeling to the utmost point of sublimity or pathos, by all
the force of comparison oi* contrast : loses the sense of
present suffering in the imaginary exaggeration of it :
exhausts the terror or pity by an unlimited indulgence of
it: grapples with impossibilities in its desperate im-
patience of restraint: throws us back upon the past,
forward into the ftiture: brings every moment of our
being or object of nature in startling review before us :
and in the rapid whirl of events, lifts us from the depths
of woe to the highest contemplations on human life.
When Lear says of Edgar, "Nothing but his unkind
daughters could have brought him to this," what a be-
wildered amazement, what a wrench of the imagination,
that cannot be brought to conceive of any other cause of
misery than that which has bowed it down, and absorbs
all other sorrow in its own! His sorrow, like a flood,
supplies the sources of all other sorrow. Again, when

On Poetry in General. 7

he exclaims in the mad scene, " The little dogs and all,
Tray, Blanche, and Sweetheart, see, they bark at me I" it
is passion lendin]g occasion to imagination to make every
CHreature in league against him, conjuring up ingratitude
and insult in their least looked-for and most gaUing
shapes, searching every thread and ^bre of his heart, and
finding out the last remaining image of respect or attach-
ment in the bottom of his breast, only to torture and kill
it ! In like manner, the "So I am " of Cordelia gushes
from her heart like a torrent of tears, relieving it of a
weight of love and of supposed ingratitude, which had
pressed upon it for years. What a fine return of the
passion upon itself is that in Othello — with what a
>ningled agony of regret and despair he clings to the
last traces of departed happiness, when he exclaims :

** O now, for ever.

Farewell the tranquil mind ! farewell content !
Farewell the plumed troop, and the big wars,
That make ambition, virtue 1 O, farewell !
Farewell the neighing steed, and the shrill trump,
The spirit-stirring drum, the ear-piercing fife,
The royal banner ; and all quality.
Pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war !
And O you mortal engines, whose rude throats
Th' immortal Jove's dread clamours counterfeit,
Farewell ! Othello's occupation 's gone !" *

How his passion lashes itself up and swells and rages
like a tide in its sounding course, when, in answer to
the doubts expressed of his returning love, he says :

** Never, lago. Like to the Pontic sea.
Whose icy current and compulsive course
Ne'er feels retiring ebb, but keeps due on
To the Propontic and the Hellespont :
Even so my bloody thoughts, with violent pace.
Shall ne'er look back, ne'er ebb to humble love.
Till that a capable and wide levongc
Swallow them up."t

♦ '* Othello," iii. 3. t Ibid.

8 On Poetry in General.

The climax of his expostulation afterwards with Desde-

mona is at that passage :*

" But there where I have gamer'd up my heart ....
To be diBcarded thence I"

One mode in which the dramatic exhibition of passion
excites onr sympathy without raising our disgust is, that
in proportion as it sharpens the edge of calamity and dis-
appointment, it strengthens the desire of good. It en-
hances our consciousness of the blessing, by making us
sensible of the magnitude of the loss. The storm of
passion lays bare and shows us the rich depths of the
human soul : the whole of our existence, the sum total of
our passions and pursuits, of that which we desire and
that which we dread, is brought before us by contrast;
the action and re-action are equal ; the keenness of imme-
diate suffering only gives us a more intense aspiration
after, and a more intimate participation with the antagonist
world of good: makes us drink deeper of the cup of
human life: tugs at the heart-strings : loosens j;he pressure
about them, and calls the springs of thought and feeling
into play with tenfold force.

Impassioned poetry is an iemanation of the moral and
intellectual part of our nature, as well as of the sensitive —
of the desire to know, the will to act, and the power to
foel ; and ought to appeal to these different parts of our
constitution, in order to be perfect. The domestic or
prose tragedy, which is thought to be the most natural,
' Is in this sense the least so, because it appeals almost ex-
clusively to one of these faculties, our sensibility. The
tragedies of Moore and Lillo, for this reason, however
affecting at the time, oppress and lie like a dead weight
upon the mind, a load of misery which it is unable to
throw off; the tragedy of Shakspeare, which is true
poetry, stirs our inmost affections; abstracts evil &om

* By a slip of the pen the author wrote Une, See " Othello," iv.
1. (Dyce's edit. 1868, vii. 446.)— En.

■^

(

On Poetry in Oeneral. 9

itself by combining it with all the forms of imagination, \
and with the deepest workings of the heart ; and rouses <
the whole man within ue.

The pleasure, however, derived from tragic poetry is
not anythiDg peculiar to it as poetry, as a fictitious and
fanciful thing. It is not an anomaly of the imagination.
It has its source and ground-work in the common love of
"^ strong excitement. As Mr, Burke observes, people flock
to see a tragedy ; but if there were a public execution in
the next street, the theatre would very soon be empty.
It is not then the difference between fiction and reality
that solves the difficulty. Children are satisfied with the
stories of ghosts and witches in plain prose : nor do the
hawkers of full, true, and particular accounts of murders
and executions about the streets find it necessary to have
them turned into penny ballads, before they can dispose
of these interesting and authentic documents. The grave
politician drives a thriving trade of abuse and calumnies
poured out against those whom he makes his enemies for
BO other end than that he may live by them. The popular
preacher makes less frequent mention of Heaven than of
hell. Oaths and nicknames are only a more vulgar sort
of poetry or rhetoric. Wq^ are as fond of indulging our
violent passions as of reading a description of those of ^
.others. We are as prone to make a torment of our fears,
as to luxuriate in our hopes of good. If it be asked, Why
we do so? the best answer will be, Because we cannot
help it. The sense of power . is as strong a principle in
the mind as the love of pleasure. ^ Objects of terror and
pity exercise the same despotic control over it as those of
love or beauty. It is as natural to hate as to love, to
despise as to admire, to express our hatred or contempt,
as our love or admiration :

'^ Masterless passiou sways us to the mood
Of what it likes or loathes."

Not that we like what we loathe ; but we like to in-

4 •

;^ 10 On Poetry in, General.

1.

^k, dulge our hatred and scorn of it, to dwell upon it, to

,'^ exasperate our idea of it by every refinement of ingenuity

and extravagance of illustration, to make it a bugbear to

• ourselves, to point it out to others in all the splendour of

deformity, to embody it to the senses, to stigmatise it by

name, to grapple with it in thought — ^in action, to sharpen

our intellect, to arm our will against it, to know the worst

we have to contend with, and to contend with it to the

^Jitmosp Poiatry isiMily thgJiighest elogueaoe gf pasgion,

the most vivid form of expression that can be given to our

conception of anything, whether pleasurable or painful,

mean or dignified, delightful or distressing. It is the

perfect coincidence of the image, and the words with the

feelingvwe has©, and gf which we cimnot get rid in any

o^her way, that gives an instant "satisfaction to the

/thpu^t." This is equally the origin of wit and fancy, of

Q comedy and tragedy, of the sublime and pathetic. When

Pope says of the Lord Mayor's show —

" Now night descending, the proud scene is o'er,
But lives in Settle's numbers one day more !"

when Collins makes Danger, "with limbs of giant

mould,"

" Throw him on the steep

Of some loose hanging rock asleep ** :

when Lear calls out in extreme anguish —

" Ingratitude, thou marble-hearted fiend,
More hideous, when thou shew'st thee in a child
Than the sea-monster !'* *

the passion of contempt in the one case, of terror in the
other, and of indignation in the last, is perfectly satisfied.
We see the thing ourselves, and show it to others as we feel
it to exist, and as, in spite of ourselves, we are compelled
to think of it. The imagination, by thus embodying and
turning them to shape, gives an obvious relief to the in-

» " Lear," iv. 1. (Dyce's ed. 1868, vii. 270.)— Ed.

^

On Poetry in Qeneral. 11

distinct and importunate cravings of the wiU. We do not "^
wish the thing to be so ; but we wish it to appear such as • (
it is. For knowledge is conscious power ; and the mind ;
is no longer in this case the dupe, though it may be the i
victim, of vice or folly.

Poetry is in all its shapes the language of the imagina-
tion and the passions, of fancy and will. Nothing, there-
fore, can be more absurd than the outcry which has been
sometimes raised by frigid and pedantic critics for
reducing the language of poetry to the standard of common
sense and reason : for the end and use of poetry, '* both at
the first and now, was and is to hold the mirror up to
nature," seen through the medium of passion and imagina-
tion, not divested of that medium by means of literal truth
or abstract reason. The painter of history might as well
be required to represent the face of a person who has just
trod upon a serpent with the still-life expression of a
common portrait, as the poet to describe the most striking
and vivid impressions which things can be supposed to
make upon the mind, in the language of common conver-
Bation. Let who will strip nature of the colours and the*-
shapes of fancy, the poet is not bound to do so ; the im-
pressions of common sense and strong imagination, that is,
of passion and indifference, cannot be the same, and they
must have a separate language to do justice to either. '
Objects must strike differently upon the mind, inde-
pendently of what they are in themselves, as long as we
have a different interest in them, as we see them in a
different point of view, nearer or at a greater distance
(morally or physically speaking) from novelty, from old
acquaintance, from our ignorance of them, from our fear
of their consequences, from contrast, from unexpected
likeness. We can no more take away the faculty of the
imagination, than we can see all objects without light or
shade. Some^ things must dazzle us by their preternatural
light ; others must hold us in suspense, and tempt our

J

. - - I

12 On Poetry in OeneraJ.

curiosity to explore their obscurity. Those who would
dispel these various illusions, to give us their drab-coloured
creation in their stead, are not very wise. Let the
naturalist, if he will, catch the glow-worm, carry it home
with him in a box, and £nd it next morning nothing but a
little grey worm : let the poet or the lover of poetry visit
it at evening, when beneath the scented hawthorn and the
crescent moon it has built itself a palace of emerald light.
This is also one part of nature, one appearance which the
glow-worm presents, and that not the least interesting ;
so poetry is one part of the history of the human mind,
though it is neither science nor philosophy, fit cannot be
concealed, however, that the progress of knowledge and
refinement has a tendency tp circumscribe the limits of
the imagination, and to dip the wings of poetry. The'
province of the imagination is principally visionary, the
unknown and undefined : the understanding restores things
to their natural boundaries, and strips them of their fan-
ciful pretensions. Hence the history of religious and
poetical enthusiasm is much the same ; and both have
received a sensible ^shock &om the progress of experi-
mental philosophyj It is the undefined and uncommon
that gives birth and scope to the imagination ; we can
only fancy what we do not know. As in looking into the
mazes of a tangled wood we fill them with what shapes
we please — with ravenous beasts, with caverns vast, and
drear enchantments — so in our ignorance of the world about
us, we make gods or devils of the first object we see, and
set no bounds to the wilful suggestions of our hopes and

fears:

" And visions, as poetic eyes avow,
Hang on each leaf and cling to every bough."

There can never be another Jacob's Dream. Since that
time, the heavens have gone farther off, and grown astrono-
mical. They have become averse to the imagination ; nor
will they return to us on the squares of .the distances, or

On Poetry in General.

1»

on Doctor Chalmers's Discourses. Bembrandt's picture
brings the matter nearer to ns. It is not only the pro-
gress of mechanical knowledge, but the necessary adyance6^
of civilisation, that are un&vourable to the spirit of poetry. /
We not only stand in less awe of the preternatural world, ^
but we can calculate more surely, and look with more in-
difference, upon the regular routine of this. The heroes '
of the fabulous ages rid the world of monsters and giants.
At present we are less exposed to the vicissitudes of good
or evil, to the incursions of wild beasts or '* bandit fierce,"
or to the unmitigated fury of the elements. The time
has been tha^ *' our fell of hair would at a dismal treatise
rouse, and stir as life were in it." But the^ police spoils
all ; and we now hardly so much as dream of a midnight
murder. Macbeth is only tolerated in this country for
the sake of the music ; and in the United States of A me- *
rica, where the philosophical principles of government are
carried still further in theory and practice, we find that
the Beggar's Opera is hooted from the stage. Society, by
degrees, is constructed into a machine that carries ns safely
and insipidly from one end of life to the other, in a very \
comfortable prose style :

" Obscurity her curtain round them "drew,
And siren Sloth a dull qnietns sung."

The remarks which have been here made, would, in some
measure, lead to a solution of the question of the com-
parative merits of painting and poetry. I do not mean to
give any preference, but it should seem that the argument
which has been sometimes set up, that painting must affect
the imaginatio^ more strongly, because it represents the
image more distinctly, is not well founded. We may
assume without much temerity that poetry is more poetical
than painting. When artists or connoisseurs talk on
stilts about the poetry of painting, they show that they
know little about poetry, and have little love for the art.

14 On Poetry in General.

Painting gives the object itself ; poetry wiiat it implies.
Painting embodies what a thing contains in itself; poetry-
suggests what exists out of it, in any manner connected
with it. But this la^t is the proper province of the ima-
gination. Again, as it relates to passion, painting gives
the event, poetry the pjoggfi sftof events; but it is during
'the progress, in the interval of expectation and suspense,
: while our hopes and fears are strained to the highest pitch
vf breathless agony, that the pinch of the interest lies :

" Between the acting of a dreadful thing
And the first motion, all the interim is
Like a phantasma, or a hideous dream.
The mortal instruments are then in council ;
And the state of man, like to a little kingdom.
Suffers then the nature of an insuiTCction.**

But by the time that the picture is painted, all is over.
Faces are the best part of a picture ; but even faces are not
what we chiefly remember in what interests us most. But
it may be asked then. Is there anything better than Claude
Lorraine's landscapes, than Titian's portraits, thanEaphael's
cartoons, or the Greek statues ? Of the two first I shall
say nothing, as they are evidently picturesque rather than
imaginative. Eaphael's cartoons are certainly the finest
comments that ever were made on the Scriptures. Would
their effect be the same if we were not acquainted with
the text ? But the New Testament existed before the car-
toons. There is one subject of which there is no cartoon :
Christ washing the feet of the disciples the night before
His death. But that chapter does not need a commentary.
It is for want of some such resting-place for the imagina-
tion that the Greek statues are little else than specious
forms. They are marble to the touch and to the heart.
They have not an informing principle within them. In
their faultless excellence they appear sufficient to them-
selves. By their beauty they are raised above the frailties
of passion or suffering. By their beauty they are deified.

"V^

On Poetry in General. 15

Bat they arc not objects of religions faith to us, and their
forms arc a reproa(ih to common humanity. They seem
to have no sympathy with us, and not to want our
admiration.

Poetry in its matter and form is natural imagery or feel- \
ing, combined with passion and fancy. In its mode of
conveyance, it combines the ordinary use of language with
musical expression. There is a question of long standing
vn what the essence of poetry consists, or what it is that
determines why one set of ideas should be expressed in
prose, another in verse. Milton has told lus his idea of
poetry in a sing le line: oi kv^ \ - v c . <:: I \i ,

" Thoughts that voluntary move
HarmoniouB numbers.*'

As there are certain sounds that excite certain move-
ments, and the song and dance go together, so there are,
no doubt, certain thoughts that lead to certain tones of
voice, or modulations of sound, and change ** the words of
Mercury into the songs of Apollo." There is a striking
instance of this adaptation of the movement of sound and
rhythm to the subject, in Spenser's description of the
Satyrs accompanying Una to the cave of Sylvanus :

'^ So from the ground she fearless doth arise,
And T^alketh forth without suspect of crime.

They, all as glad as birds of joyous prime.
Thence lead her forth, about her dancing round.

Shouting and singing all a shepherd's rhyme ;
And with green branches strewing all the ground,
Do worship her as queen with olive garland crown'd.

And all the way their merry pipes they sound,
That all the woods and doubled echoes ring ; ^

And with their homed feet do wear the ground.
Leaping like wanton kids in pleasant spring ;

So towards old Sylvanus they her bring.
Who with the noise awaked, oometh out."*

On the contrary, there is nothing either musioal or nnturU

♦ Faery Qtteen, b. i. c. vi.

^

1

16 On Poetry in General.

in the ordinary constmction of langaage. It is a thing
altogether arbitrary and conventional. Neither in the
sounds themselves, which are the voluntary signs of certain
ideas, nor in their grammatical arrangements in common
speech, is there any principle of natural imitation, or cor-
respondence to the individual ideas or to the tone of feel-
ing with which they are conveyed to others. The jerks,
the *breaks, the inequalities and harshnesses of prose are
fi&tai to the flow of a poetical imagination, as a jolting
road or a stumbling horse disturbs the reverie of an absent
man. But p.ofitiy makes these odds all even. It is the
music of language, answering to the music of the mind,
' untying, as it were, "the secret soul of harmony." Wherever
/ any object takes such a hold of the mind as to make us
' dwell upon it, and brood over it, melting the heart in
tenderness, or kindling it to a sentiment of enthusiasm ;
wherever a movement of imagination or passion is im-
pressed on the mind, by which it seeks to prolong and repeat
the emotion, to bring all other objects into accord with it,
and to give the same movement of harmony, sustained and
continuous, or gradually varied, according to the occasion,
to the sounds that express it — this is poetry. The musical
in sound is the sustained and continuous ; the musical in
thought is the sustained and continuous also. There is a
near connection between music and deep-rooted passion.
Mad people sing. As often as articulation passes naturally
into intonation, there poetry begins. Where one idea gives
a tone and colour to others, where one feeling melts others
into it, there can be no reason why the same principle
should not be extended to the sounds by which the voice
utters these emotions of the soul, and blends syllables and
lines into each other. It is to supply the inherent defect
of .Jiarmony in the customary mechanism of language, to
make the sound an echo to the sense, when the sense
becomes a sort of echo to itself — to mingle the tide of
' verse, " the golden cadences of poetry," with the tide of

On Poetry in General, 17

feeling, flowing and murmuring as it flows — in sliort, to

take the language of the imagination from off the ground,

and enable it to spread its wings where it may indulge its

own impulses :

" Sailing with supreme dominion
Through the azure deep of air *' —

without being stopped, or fretted, or diverted with the
abruptnesses and petty obstacles, and discordant flats and
sharps of prose, that poetry was invented. It is to com-
mon language what springs are to a carriage, or wings to
feet. In ordinary speech we arrive at a certain harmony
by the modulations of the voice : in poetry the same thing
is done systematically by a regular collocation of syllables.
It has been well observed, that every one who declaims
warmly, or grows intent upon a subject, rises into a sort
of blank verse or measured prose. The merchant, as
described in Chaucer, went on his way " sounding always
the increase of his winning." Every prose-writer has
more or less of rhythmical adaptation, except poets who,
"when deprived of the regular mechanism of verse, seem
to have no principle of modulation left in their writings.*
An excuse might be made for rhyme in the same man-
ner. It is but fair that the ear should linger on the
sounds that delight it, or avail itself of the same brilliant
coincidence and unexpected recurrence of syllables, that
have been displayed in the invention and collocation of
images. It is allowed that rhyme assists the memory;
and a man of wit and shrewdness has been heard to say,
that the only four good lines of poetry are the well-known
ones which tell the number of days in the months of the
year:

" Thirty days hath September/' &o.

But if the jingle of names assists the memory, may it not

* This part of the subject is treated at large in the writer's essay
*• On the Prose Style of Poets {Flain Speaker, i. 1-30)."— Ed.

.»

18 On Poetry in General.

also quicken the fancy ? and there are other things worth
having at our fuagers' ends, besides the contents of the
/almanac. Pope's versification is tiresome from its exces-
sive sweetness and uniformity. Shakspeare's blank verse
, is the perfection of dramatic dialogue.

All is not poetry that passes for such : nor does verse
make the whole diiOference between poetry and prose. The
niad does not cease to be poetry in a literal translation ;
and Addison's Campaign has been very properly denomi-
nated a Gazette in rhyme. Common prose differs from
poetry, as treating for the mosFpart either of such irite,
faMliarj'and.irksome matters of fact, as convey no extra-
ordinary impulse to the imagination, or else of such diffi-
cult and laborious processes of the understanding, as do
not admit of the wayward or violent movements either of
the imagination or the passions.

I will mention three works which come as near to
poetry as possible without absolutely being so ; namely,
the Pilgrim's Progress, Bobinson Crusoe, and the Tales
of 'Boccaccio. Chaucer and Dryden have translated some
of the last into English rhyme, but the essence and the
power of poetry was there before. That which lifts the
[spirit above the earth, which draws the soul out of itself
with indescribable longings, is poetry in kind, and gene-
\]|ally fit to become so in name, by being "married to
jimmortal verse." If it is of the essence of poetry to strike
id ^ the imagination, whether we will or no, to make
the eye of childhood glisten with the starting tear, to be
never thought of afterwards with indifference, John Bunyan
and Daniel Defoe may be permitted to pass for poets
in their way. The mixture of fancy and reality in the
Pilgrim's Progress was never equalled in any allegory.
His pilgrims walk above the earth, and yet are on it.
What zeal, what beauty, what truth of fiction! What
deep feeling in the description of Christian's swimming
across the water at last, and in the picture of the Shining

On Podry in Oeneral. 19

Ones within the gates, with wings at their backs and
garlands on their heads, who are to wipe all tears from
his eyes I The writer's genius, though not " dipped in
dews of Castalie," was baptised with the Holy Spirit and
with fire. The prints in this book are no small part of it.
If the confinement of Fhiloctetes in the island of Lemnos
was a subject for the most beautiful of all the Greek tra-
gedies,^ what shall we say to Eobinson Crusoe in his ?
Take the speech of the Greek hero on leaving his cave,
beautiful as it is, and compare it with the reflections of
the English adventurer in his solitary place of confine-
ment. The thoughts of home, and of all from which he is
ibr ever cut off, swell and press against his bosom, as the
heaving ocean rolls its ceaseless tide against the rocky
shore, and the very beatings of his heart become audible
iai the eternal silence that surrounds him. Thus he says :

" As I walked about, either in my huntmg, or for viewing the
country, the anguish of my soul at my condition would break out
upon me on a sudden, and my very heart would die within me to
Ihink of the woods, the mountains, and deserts I was in ; and how
I was a prisoner, locked up with the eternal bars and bolts of the
ocean, in an uninhabited wilderness, without redemption. In the
Hiidst of the greatest composures of my mind, this would break out
upon me like a storm, and make me wring my hands, and weep like
a child. Sometimes it would take me in the middle of my work,**"*^?
fmd I would immediately sit down and sigh, and look upon the
ground for an hour or two together, and this was still worse to me,
for if I could burst into tears or vent myself in words, it would go off,
find the grief having exhausted itself would abate/'

The story of his adventures would not make a poem
like the Odyssey, it is true ; but the relator had the true
genius of a poet. It has been made a question whether
Bichardson's romances are poetry ; and the answer per-
haps is, that they are not poetry, because they are not
romance. The interest is worked up to an inconceivable
height ; but it is by an infinite number of little things,

* The •* Hercules Furens " of Euripides. But as to the pre-eminent
beauty and merit of this tragedy critics are at variance. — Ed.

20 On Poetry in Oeneral,

by incessant labour and calls npon the attention, by a
repetition of blows that have no rebound in them. The
sympathy excited is not a voluntary contribution, but a
tax. Nothing is unforced and spontaneous. There is a
want of elasticity and motion. The story does not " give
an echo to the seat where love is throned." The heart
does not answer of itself lik^ a chord in music. The
fancy does not run on before the writer with breathless
expectation, but is dragged along with an infinite number
of pins and wheels, like those with which the Liliputian»
dragged Gulliver pinioned to the royal palace. Sir Charles
Grandison is a coxcomb. What sort of a figure would he
cut, translated into an epic poem, by the side of Achilles ?
Clarissa, the divine Clarissa, is too interesting by half.
She is interesting in her ruffles, in her gloves, her sam-
plers, her aunts and uncles — she is interesting in all that is
uninteresting. Such things, however intensely they may
be brought home to us, are not conductors to the imagi-
nation. There is infinite truth and feeling in Eichardson ;
but it is extracted from a cajmt mortuum of circumstances :
it does not evaporate of itself. His poetical genius is like
Ariel confined in a pine tree, and requires an artificial
process to let it out. Shakspeare says :

*• Our poesy is as a guin» which oozes
From whence 'tis nourished . . . our gentle flame
Provokes itself, and, like the current, flies
Each bound it chafes." *

I shall conclude this general account with some remarks
on four of the principal works of poetry in the world, at

* **Timon of Athens," i. 1 (Dyce's ed. 1868).— Ed. Burke's
writings are not poetry, notwithstanding the vividness of the
fimcy, because the subject-matter is abstruse and dry : not natural,
^ but artificial. The difference between poetry and eloquence is,
I that the one is the eloquence of the imagination, and the other
; of the understanding. Eloquence tries to persuade the will, and
i convince the reason; poetry produces its effect by instantaneous
'! sympathy. Nothing is a subject for poetry that admits of a dispute.

^

On Poetry in General. 21

different periods of history — ^Horner, tlie Bible, Dante,
and, let me add, Ossian.^ In Homer, the principle of
action or life is predominant : in the Bible, the principle
of faith «nd the idea of Providence ; Dante is a personifi-
cation of blind will ; and in Ossian we see the decay of
life and the lag end of the world. Homer's' poetry is the
heroic : it is full of life and action : it is bright as the
day, strong as a river. In the vigonr of his intellect, he
grapples with all the objects of nature, and enters into all
the relations of social life. He saw many countries, and
the manners of many men ; and he has brought them all
together in his poem. He describes his heroes going to
battle with a prodigality of life, arising from an exuberance
of animal spirits : we see them before us, their number
and their order of battle, poured out upon the plain " all
plumed like ostriches, like eagles newly bathed, wanton
as goats, wild as young bulls, youthful as May, and gorgeous
as the Sim at midsummer," covered with glittering armour,
with dust and blood ; while the gods quaff their nectar in
golden cups, or mingle in the fray; and the old men
assembled on the walls of Troy rise up with reverence as
Helen passes by them. The multitude of things in Homer
is wonderful ; their splendour, their truth, their force and
variety. His poetry is, like his religion, the poetry of
number and form : he describes the bodies as well as the
souls of men.

The x>oetry of the Bible is that of imagination and of
faith : it is abstract and disembodied : it is not the poetry

Poets are in general bad prose-writers, because their images, though
fine in themselves, are not to the purpose, and do not carry on the
argument. The French poetry .wants the forms of the imagination.
It is didabtic more than dramatic ; and some of our own poetry
which has been most admired, is only poetry in the rhyme, and in
the studied use of poetic, diction.

* The author was not aware that the so-called Poems of Ossian
were fabricated by Macpherson himself. — ^Bd.

22 On Poetry in Oeneral.

of form, but of power ; not of mtdtitade, but of immensity;
It does not divide into many, but aggrandises into one.
Its ideas of nature af e like its ideas of God. It is not the
poetry of social life, but of solitude : each man seems alone
in the world, with the original forms of nature, the rocks^
the earth, and the sky. It is not the poetry of action or
heroic enterprise, but of faith in a supreme Providence,
and resignation to the power that governs the universe.
As the idea of 6k)d was removed farther from humanity
and a scattered polytheism, it became more profound and
intense, as it became more universal, for the Infinite is
present to everything : " If we fly into the uttermost parts
of the earth, it is there also ; if we turn to the east or the
west, we cannot escape from it." Man is thus aggrandised
in the image of his Maker. The history of the patriarchs
is of this kind; they are founders of a chosen race of
people, the inheritors of the earth; they exist in tho
generations which are to come after them. Their poetry,
like their religious creed, is vast, unformed, obscure and
infinite; a vision is upon it ; an invisible hand is suspended
over it. The spirit of the Christian religion consists in
the glory hereafter to be revealed ; but in the Hebrew
dispensation Providence took an immediate share in the
affairs of this life. Jacob's dream arose out of this in-
timate communion between heaven and earth : it was this
that let down, in the sight of the youthful patriarch, a
golden, ladder from the sky to the earth, with angels
ascending and descending upon it, and shed a light upon
the lonely place, which can never pass away. The story
of Buth, again, is as if all the depth of natural affection
in the human race was involved in her breast. There are
descriptions in the book of Job more prodigal of imagery,
more intense in passion, than any thing in Homer ; as that
of the state of his prosperity, and of the vision that came
upon ^iTTi by night. The metaphors in the Old Testament
are more boldly figurative. Things were collected more

On Poetry in OeneroH. 23

into masses, and gave a greater momefnJtwm, to the imagina*
tion.

Dante was the father of modem poetry, and he may
therefore claim a place in this connection. His poem is
the first great step from Grothic darkness and barbarism ;
and the straggle of thought in it to burst the thraldom in
which the human mind had been so long held, is felt in
every page. He stood bewildered, not appalled, on that
dark shore which separates the ancient and the moden^
world ; and saw the glories of antiquity dawning through
the abyss of time, while revelation opened its passage to
the other world. He was lost in wonder at what had been
done before him, and he dared to emulate it. Dante seems
to have been indebted to the Bible for the gloomy tone of
his mind, as well as for the prophetic fury which exalts
and kindles his poetry ; but he is utterly unlike Homer.
His genius is not a sparkling flame, but the sullen heat of
a furnace. He is power, passion, self-will personified. In
all that relates to the descriptive , or fanciful part of poetry,
he bears no comparison to many who had gone before, or
who have come after him ; but there is a gloomy abstrac-
tion in his conceptions, which lies like a dead weight upon
the mind — a benumbing stupor, a breathless awe, £rom the
intensity of the impression — a terrible obscurity, like that
which oppresses us in dreams — an identity of interest,
which moulds every object to its own purposes, and clothes
all things with the passions and imaginations of the human
soul — that make amends for all other deficiencies. The
immediate objects he presents to the mind are not much
in themselves; they want grandeur, beauty, and order;
but they become everything by the force of the character
he impresses upon them. His mind lends its own power
to the objects which it contemplates, instead of borrowing
it from them. He takes advantage even of the nakedness
and dreary vacuity of his subject. £[is imagination peoples
the shades of death, and broods over the silent air. He is

\

24 On Poetry in Oenerai.

tlie severest of all writers, the most hard and impenetrable,
the most opposite to the flowery and glittering ; [the writer]
who relies most on his own power, and the sense of it in
others, and who leaves most room to the imagination of his
readers. Dante's only endeavour is to interest ; and he in-
terests by exciting our sympathy with the emotion by which
he is himself possessed. He does not place before ns the ob-
jects by which that emotion has been created ; but he seizes
on the attention, by showing us the effect they produce on hig
feelings ; and his poetry accordingly gives the same thrill-
ing and overwhelming sensation which is caught by gazing
on the face of a person who has seen some object of horror.
The improbability of the events, the abruptness and mono-
tony in the " Inferno," are excessive : but the interest never
flags, from the continued earnestness of the author's mind
Dante's great power is in combining internal feelings witk
external objects. Thus the gate of hell, on which that
withering inscription is written, seems to be endowed wit!
speech and consciousness, and to utter its dread warning
not without a sense of mortal woes. This author habitu*
ally unites the absolutely local and individual with the
greatest wildness and mysticism. In the midst of the ob-
scure and shadowy regions of the lower world, a tomb
suddenly rises up with the inscription, " I am the tomb
of Pope Anastasius the Sixth :" and half the personages
whom he has crowded into the "Inferno" are his own
acquaintance. All this, perhaps, tends to heighten the
effect by the bold intermixture of realities, and by
an appeal, as it were, to the individual knowledge
and experience of the reader. He affords few subjects
for picture. There is, indeed, one gigantic one, that of
Count Ugolino, of which Michael Angelo made a bas-
telief, and which Sir Joshua Ee3rnolds ought not to have
painted^

Another writer whom I shall mention last, and whom I
cannot persuade myself to think a mere modem in the

On Poetry in General. 25

^onndwork, is Ossian.* He is a feeling and a name tliat
-can never be destroyed in the minds of liis readers. As
Homer is the first yigour and lustihead, Ossian is the decay
and old age of poetry. He lives only in the recollection
and regret of the past. There is one impression which he
conveys more entirely than all other poets ; namely, the
sense of privation, the loss of all things, of friends, of good
name, of country ; he is even without God in the world.
He converses only with the spirits of the departed ; with
the motionless and silent clouds. The cold moonlight
sheds its faint lustre on his head; the fox peeps out of the
ruined tower ; the tHstle waves its beard to the wandering
gale ; and the strings of his harp seem, ad the hand of age,
as the tale of other times, passes over them, to sigh and
rustle like the dry reeds in the winter's wind I The feel-
ing of cheerless«desolation, of the loss of the pith and si^
of existence, of the annihilation of the substance, and the
clinging to the shadow of all things, as in a mock-embrace,
is here perfect. In this way, the lamentation of Selma for
the loss of Salgar is the finest of all. If it were indeed
possible to show that this writer was nothing, it wonid
only be another instance of mutability, another blank
made, another void left in the heart, another confirmation
of that feeling which makes him so often complain, '' Boll
on, ye dark brown years, ye bring no joy on your wing to
Ossian!"

'*' It is probable that Macpherson collected certain oral traditions
in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, and elaborated them into
^hat we see. He was a sort of Bishop Percy on a bolder Qcale*
without the bishop's honesty and candour. — ^Ed.

( 26 )

/

LECTUEE n.

ON GHAUCEB AND SPENSEB.

Hayxng, in the former Lecture, given some account of the
nature of poetry in general, I shall proceed, in the next
place, to a more particular consideration of the genius and
history of English poetry. I shall take, as the subject of
the present lecture, Chaucer and Spenser, two out of four
of the greatest names in poetry of which this country has to
boast. Both of them, however, were much indebted to the
early poets of Italy, and may be considered as belonging,
in a certain degree, to the same school. The freedom and
copiousness with which our most original writers, in former
periods, availed themselves of the productions of their
predecessors, frequently transcribing T^hole passages, with-
out scruple or acknowledgment, may appear contrary to
the etiquette of modem literature, when the whole stock
of poetical common-places has become public property,
and no one is compelled to trade upon any particular
author. But it is not so much a subject of wonder at a
time, when to read and write was of itself an honorary dis-
tinction, when learning was almost as great a rarity as
genius, and when, in fact, those who first transplanted the
beauties of other languages into their own, might be con-
sidered as public benefactors and the founders of a national
literature. There are poets older than Chaucer, and in
the interval between him and Spenser ; but their genius
was not such as to place them in any point />f comparison
with either of these celebrated men; and an inquiry
into their particular merits or defects might seem rather

On Chaucer and Spenser. 27

to belong to the proyince of the antiquary, than be thought
generally interesting to the lovers of poetry in the pre-
sent day.

Chaucer (who has been very properly considered as the
father of English poetry) pjeceded Spenser by two cen-
tories. He is supposed to have been bom in London, in
the year 1328, during the reign of Edward III., and to
have died in 1400, at the age of seventy-two. He received
a learned education at one, or at both of the universities,*
and travelled early into Italy, where he became thoroughly
imbued with the spirit and excellences' of the great
Italian poets and prose-writers, Dante, Petrarch, and
Boccacio ; and is said to have had a personal interview
with one of these, Petrarch. He was connected by mar-
riage with the famous John of Gaunt,f through whose
interest he was introduced into several public employ-
ments. Chaucer was an active partisan, a religious re-
former, and from the share he took in some disturbances on
one occasion, he was obliged to fly the country. On his
return, he was imprisoned, and made his peace with govern-
ment, as it is said, by a discovery of his associates. For-
titude does not appear at any time to have been the dis-
tinguishing virtue of poets. There is, however, an obvious
similarity between the practical turn of Chaucer's mind
and restless impatience of his character, and the tone of his
writings. Yet it would be too much to attribute the one
to the other as cause and effect : for Spenser, whose poet-
ical temperament was as effeminate as Chaucer's was stem
and masculine, was equally engaged in public affairs, and
had mixed equally in the great world. So much does native
disposition predominate over accidental circumstances,
moulding i^em to its previous bent and purposes! For
while Chaucer's intercourse with the busy world, and col-

* This is exofeasively doubtful. See Bell's Chaucer^ i. 10-13. — ^En.
t He merely married the sister of one of John of Gaunt's first
Duchess^ maids of honour. — Ed.

28 On Chauoer and Spenser.

lifiion with the actual passioiis and conflicting interests of
others, seemed to brace the sinews of his understanding,
and gave to his writings the air of a man who describes
persons and things that he had known and been intimately
concerned in ; the same opportunities, operating on a dif-
ferently-constituted frame, only served to alienate Spenser's
mind the more from the " close-pent-up " scenes of ordi-
nary life, and to make him '' rive their concealing conti-
nents," to give himself up to the unrestrained indulgence
of " flowery tenderness /^

ft is not possible for any two writers to be more oppo-
site in this respect. Spenser delighted in luxurious enjoy-
ment ; Chaucer, in severe activity of mind. As Spenser was
the most romantic and visionary, Chaucer was the most
practical of all the great poets, the most a man of business
and the world. His poetry reads like history. Jlvery-

' thing has a downright reality, at least in the relator's mii^.

• A simile or a sentiment is as if it were given in upon evi-
dence. Thus he describes Cressid's flrst avowal of her love :

" And as the new abashed nightingale,
That stinteth first when she beginneth siDg»
When that she heareth any herders tale,
Or in the hedges any wight stirring.
And after, sicker, doth her voice ontring ;
Bight so Oresseide, when that her dread stent,
Open'd her heart, and told him her intent."

This is so true and natural, and beautifully simple, that

the two things seem identified with each other. Again, it

is said in the Knight's Tale :

" Thns passeth yere by yere, and day by day,
Till it felle ones in a morwe of May,
That Emelie that fayrer was to sene
Than is the lilie upon his stalke grene ;
And fresher than the May with floures newe,
For with the rose-colour strof hire hewe :
I n'ot * which was the finer of hem two."

* I. e, ne not, do not know. — li).

On Chaucer and Spenser. 29

This scrapnlousness about the literal preference, as if some
question of matter of fsict was at issue, is remarkable. I
might mention that other, where he compares the meeting
between Palamon and Arcite to a hunter waiting for a
lion in a gap :

" That stondeth at a gap with a spere,
Whan hunted is the lion or the bere,
And hereth him ooiae rushing in the greyes,
And breking bothe the boughes and the leyes " :

or that still finer one of Constance, when she is condemned

to death :

'^Have ye not seen sometime a pale face
(Among a prees) of him that hath been lad
Toward his deth, wheras he geteth no grace,
And swiche a colour ia his face hath had.
Men mighten know him that was so bestad,
Amonges all the faces in that route ;
So stant Custance, and loketh hire aboute."

r

The beauty, the pathos here does not seem to be of the
poet's seeking, but a part of the necessary texture of the
&ble. He speaks of what he wishes to describe with the
accuracy, the discrimination of one who relates what has
happened to himself, or has had the best information £rom
those who have been high-witnesses of it. The strokes of
his pencil always tell. He dwells only on the easfigtial,
on that which would be interesting to the persons really
concerned: yet as he never omits any material circum-
stance, he is prolix from the number of points on which he
touches, without being diffuse on any one ; and is some-
times tedious from the fidelity with which he adheres to
his subject, as other writers are £rom the frequency of
their digressions from it. The chain of his story is com
posed of a number of fiine links, closely connected together,
and riveted ,by a single blow. There is an instance of
the minuteness which he introduces into his most serious
descriptions in his account of Palamon when left alone in
his cell :

( I 1

/

\

80 On Chducer and Spenser.

*^ Swiche sorrow he maketh that the grate tour
Besouned of his yelling * and clamour :
The pure fetters on his shinnes grete
Were of his bitter salte teres wete."

The mention of this last circumstance looks like a part of
the instructions he had to follow, whicli lie had no discre-
tionary power to leave out or introduce at pleasure. He
is contented to fuad grace and beauty in truth, He exhibits
for the most part the naked object, with little . drapery
thrown over it. His metaphors, "which are few, are not
for ornament, but use, and as like as possible to the things
themselves. He does not affect to show his power over
the reader's mind, but the power which his subject has over
his own. The readers of Chaucer's poetry feel more nearly
what the persons he describes must have felt, than perhaps
those of any other poet. His sentiments are not voluntary
effusions of the poet's fancy, but [are] founded on the
natural impulses and habitual prejudices of the characters
he has to represent. There is an inveteracy of purpose, a
sincerity of feeling, which never relaxes or grows vapid,
in whatever they do or say. There is no artificial, pompous
display, but a strict parsimony of the poet's materials, like
the rude simplicity of the age in which he lived. His
poetry resembles the root just springing £rom the ground,
rather than the full-blown flower. His muse is no '' babbling
gossip of the air," fluent and redundant : but, like a stam-
merer or a dumb person, that has just found the use of
speech, tcrowds many things together with eager haste, with
anxious pauses, and fond repetitions to prevent mistake.
His words point as an index to the objects, like the eye or
finger. There were none of the common-places of poetic
diction in our author's time, no reflected lights of fiuicy,
no borrowed roseate tints ; he was obliged to inspect things

* This term is used by Chaucer merely in the sense of vehement
crying. Browne employs it in the same sense in his " Britannica'a
Pastorals."— Ed.

On Chaucer and Spenser, 31

for himself, to look narrowly, and almost to handle the
object, as in the obscurity of morning we partly see and
partly grope our way ; so that his descriptions have a sort
of tangible character belonging to them, and produce the
effect of sculpture on the mind. Chaucer had an equal eye
for truth of nature and discrimination of character ; and
his interest in what he saw gave new distinctness and force
to ,his power of observation. The picturesque and the
dramatic are in him closely blended together, and hardly '
distinguishable ; for he principally describes external ap-
pearances as indicating character, as symbols of internal ^
sentiment. There is a meaning in what he sees ; and it is
this which catches his eye by sympathy. Thus the costume
and dress of the Canterbury Pilgrims, of the Enight,
the Squire, the Oxford Scholar, the Gap-toothed Wife of
Bath, and the rest, speak for themselves. To take one or
two of these at random :

*' There was also a nonne, a Prioresse,

That of hire smiling was ful simple and coy ;

Hire gretest othe n- as but by seint Eloy :

And she was cleped Madame Englentine.

Ful wel she sange the service divine

Entuned in hire nose ful semyly ;

And Frenche she spake ful fayre and fetisly,

After the scole of Stratford atte Bowe,

For Frenche of Paris was to hire unknowe.

At mete wel y taughte was she withalle ;

She lette np morsel from hire lippes falle,

Ne wette hire fingres in hire sauce depe.*
• « ♦ ♦ « *

And sikerly she was of great disport,
And ful plesant, and amiable of port.
And peined hire to contrefeten chere
Of court, and ben estatlich of manere,
And to ben holden digne of reverence.
But for to speken of hire conscience,

* Chaucer found these and others laid down in the manualB of
good behaviour, current in his time, as rules of conduct at table.
See Mr. FumivaVs Bdbees Bohe, 1868.— En.

82 On Chaucer and Spenser.

She was so charitable and so pitous,
She wolde wepe if that she saw a mons
Caughte in a trappe, if it were ded or bledda
Of smale houndes hadde she, that she fedde
With rested flesh, and milk, and wastel brede.
But sore wept she if on of hem were dede,
Or if men smote it with a yerde smert :
And all was conscience and tendre herte.

Ful semely hire wimple ypinched was ;
Hire nose streight ; hire eyen grey as glas ;
Hire mouth ful smale ; and therto soft and red;
But sickerly she hadde a fayre forehed.
It was almost a spanne brode, I trowe."

" A Monk there was, a fayre for the maistrie,
An out-rider, that loved venerie :
A manly man, to ben an abbot able.
Ful many a deinte hors hadde he in stable :
And when he rode, men mighte his bridel here^
Gyngle in a whistling wind as clere.
And eke as loude as doth the chapell belle,
Ther as this lord was keper of the celle.
The reule of Seint Maure and of Seint Beneit ;
Because that it was olde and somdele streit.
This ilke monk lette forby hem pace.
And held after the newe world the space.
He yave not of that text a pulled hen.
That saith, that hunters ben not holy men ; —
Therfore he was a prickasoure a right :
Greihoundes he hadde as swift as fowel in flight :
Of pricking and of hunting for the hare
Was all his lust, for no cost wolde he spare.

I SAif his- sleeves purfiled at the bond
With gris, and that the finest of the lend.
And for to fasten his hood under his chiune.
He had of gold ywrought a curious pinne :
A love-knotte in the greter end ther was.
His bed was balled, and shone as any glas,
And eke his face, as he hadde ben anuint.
He was a lord ful fat and in good point.
His eyen stepe, and rolling in his hed.
That stemed as a fomeis of a led.
His botes souple, his hors in gret estat.
Now certainly he was a fayre prelat.

1

On Chaucer and Spenser. 33

He was not pale as a for-pined gost.
A fat swan loved he best of any rost.
His palfrey was as bronne as eny bery."

The Serjeant at Law is the same identical individual as

Lawyer Dowling in Tom Jones, who wished to divide

himseK into a hundred pieces, to be in a hundred places

at once :'

'* No wher so besy a man as he ther n'as,
And yet he semed besier than he was."

The Frankelein, in " whose hous it snewed of mete and
drinke ;" the Shipman, " who rode upon a rouncie, as he
couthe;" the Doctour of Phisike, "whose studie was but
litel of the Bible ;" the Wif of Bath, in

** All whose parish ther was non,
That to the offring before hire shnlde gon,
.And if ther did, certain so wroth was she,
That she was out of alle oharittee ;" —

the poure Persone of a toun, ^' whose parish was wide,
and houses fer asonder ;" the Miller, and the Beve, '' a
slendre colerike man," are all of the same stamp. They
are every one samples of a kind ; abstract definitions of a
species. Chaucer, it has been said, ntmihered the classes
of mec, «s LinnsBUS numbered the plants. Most of them
remain to this day : others that are obsolete, and may well
be dispensed with, still live in his descriptions of them.
Such is the Sompnoure :

" A Sompnoure was ther with us in that place.
That hadde a Hre-red cherubinnes face,
For sausefleme he was, with eyen narwe,
As bote he was, and likerous as a sparwe,
With scalled browes blake, and pilled herd :
Of his visage children were sore aferd.
Ther n'as quicksilver, litarge, ne brimston,
Boras, ceruse, ne oile of tartre non,
Ne oinement that wolde dense or bite,
That him might helpen of his whelkes white,
Ne of the knobbes sitting on his chekes.
Wei loved he garlike, onions, and eklekes,

34 On Chaucer and Spenser,

And for to dxinke strong win as rede as blood.
Than wolde he speke, and crie as he were wood.
And whan that he wel dronken had the win.
Than wold he speken no word but Latin.
A fewe termes coude he, two or three,
That he hud lemed out of som decree ;
No wonder is, he heard it all the day. —

In danger hadde he at his owen assifie
The yonge girles of the diocise,
And knew hir conseil, and was al hir rede.
A gerlond hadde he sette upon his hede
As gi'et as it were for an alestake :
A bokeler hadde he made him of a cake.
With him ther rode a gentil Pardonere —
A Yoys he hadde as smale as eny gote."

It would be a curious speculation (at least for those
who think that the characters of men never change, though
manners, opinions, and institutions may) to know what has
become of this character of the Sompnoure in the present
day ; whether or not it has any technical representative in
existing professions ; into what channels and conduits it
has withdrawn itseK, where it lurks unseen in cunning
obscurity, or else shows its fece boldly, pampered into all
the insolence of office, in some other shape, as it is deterred
or encouraged by circumstances. Chaucer*8 characters
modernised^TipaD. this principle of historic derivation, would
be an useful addition to our knowledge of human nature.
But who is there to undertake it ?

The descriptions of the equipage and accoutrements of
the two kings of Thrace and Inde, in the Knight's Tale,
are as striking and grand, as the others are lively and
natural :

** Ther maist thou se coming with Falamon
Licurge himself, the grete king of Trace :
Blake was his berd, and manly waa his face.
The cercles of his eyen in his hed
They gloweden betwixen yelwe and red,
And like a grifiEbn loked he about,
With kemped heres on his browes stout ;

On Chaucer and Spenser. 85

His limmes gret, his bratmes hard and stronge,
His shouldres brode, his arms round and longe.
And as the guise was in his contree,
Ful highe upon a char of gold stood he,
With foure white holies in the trais.
Instede of cote-armure on his hamais,
With nayles yelwe, and bright as any gold,
He hadde a beres skin, cole-blake for old.
His longe here was kempt behind his bak.
As any ravenes fether it shone for blake.
A wreth of gold arm-gret, and huge of weight,
Upon his hed set full of stones bright.
Of fine rubins and of fine diamants.
About his char wente white alauns,
Twenty and mo, as great as any stere.
To hunten at the leon or the dere.
And folwed him, with mosel fast ybound. —

With Arcita, in stories as men find,
The grete Emetrius, the king of Inde,
Upon a stede bay, trapped in stele,
Covered with cloth of gold diapred wele,
Came riding like the god of armes Mars.
His cote-armure was of a cloth of Tars,
Couched with perles, white, and round and grete.
His sadel was of brent gold new ybete ;
A mantelet upon his shouldres hanging
Bret-ful of rubies red, as fire sparkling.
His crispe here like ringes was yronne,
And that was yelwe, and gliteryng as the Sonne.
His nose was high, his eyen were citrin,
His lippes round, his colour was sanguin,
A fewe freknes in his face yspreint,
Betwixe yelwe and somdel blake ymeint, /

And as a leon he his loking caste.
Of five and twenty yere his age I caste.
His herd W8is wel begonne for to spring ;
His vols was as a trompe thondering.
Upon his hed he wered of laurer grene
A gerlond freshe and lusty for to sene.
Upon his hond he bare for his delyt
An egle tame, as any lily whit. —
About the king ther ran on every part
Ful many a tame leon and lepart."

.>-'

«,

36 On Chaucer and Spenser.

Whskt a deal of terrible beauty there is contained in this
description I The imagination of a poet brings such objects
before us, as when we look at wild beasts in a menagerie ;
their claws are pared, their eyes glitter like harmless
lightning ; bnt we gaze at them with a pleasing awe, dothed
in beaniy, formidable in the sense of abstract power.

Chancer's descriptions of natnral scenery possess the
same sort of characteristic excellence, or what might be
, termed gmto. They have a local tmth and freshness,
. which gives the very feeling of the air, the coolness or
moisture of the ground. Inanimate objects are thus made
; to have a fellow-feeling in the interest of the story ; and
, render back the sentiment of the speaker's mind. One of
the finest parts of Chaucer is of this mixed kind. It is the
beginning of the Flower and the Lea:!^* where he describes
the delight of that young beauty, shrouded in her bower,
and listening, in the morning of the year, to the singing
of the nightingale; whilb her joy rises with the rising
song, and gushes out afresh at every pause, and is borne
along with the . fall tide of pleasure, and still increases,
and repeats, and prolongs itself and knows no ebb. The
coolness of the arbour, its retirement, the early time of
the day, the sudden starting up of the birds in the neigh-
bouring bushes, the eager del^ht with which they devour
and rend the opening buds and flowers, are expressed with
a truth and feeling, which make the whole appear like the
recollection of an actual scene :

''Which as me thought was right a pleasant sight,
And eke the briddes song for to here,
Would haue rejoiced any earthly wight,
And I that couth not yet in no manere
Heare the nightingale of all the yeare^
Ful busily herkened with herte and eare,
If I her voice perceiue cond any where.

* Mr. Henry Bradshaw, keeper of the public library at Gam-
bridge, pronounces this poem not to be Chaucer's. — ^Ed.

On Chaucer and Spenser. 37

And I that all this pleasaiint sight sie,
Thought eodainlj I felt so sweet an aire
Of the eglentere, that certainely
There is no herte I deme in such despaire,
Ne with thoughts froward and contraire,
60 onerlaid, but it should soone haue bote,
If it had ones felt this savour sote. •

And as I stood and cast aside mine eie,

I was ware of the fairest medler tree

That ever yet in all my life I sie

As full of blossomes as it might be,

Therein a goldfinch leaping pretile

Fro bough to bough, and as him list he eet

Here and there of buddes and floures sweet.

And to the herber side was joyning
This faire tree, of which I haue you told,
And at the last the brid began to sing,
Whan he had eaten what he eat wold,
80 passing sweetly, that by manifold
It was more pleasaunt than I coud deuise,
And whan his song was ended in this wise,

The nightingale with so merry a note

AnsT\'ered him, that all the wood rong

So sodainly, that as it were a sote,

I stood astonied, so was I with the song

Thorow rauished, that till late and long,

I ne wist in what place I was, ne where,

And ayen me thought she song euen by mine erew

Wherefore I waited about busily
On euery side, if I her might see,
And at the last I gan full well aspie
Where she sat in a fresh grene laurer tree^
On the further side euen right by me.
That gaue so passing a delicious smell.
According to the eglentere full well.

Whereof I had so inly great pleasure,
That as me thought I surely rauished was
Into Paradice, where my desire
Was for to be, and no ferther passe
As for that day, and on the sote grasse,
I sat me downe, for as for mine entent,
The birds song was more conuenient.

88 On Chaucer mid Spenser.

And more pleasaunt to me by manifold.
Than meat or drinke, or any other thing.
Thereto the herber was so fresh and cold.
The wholesome sanonrs eke so comforting.
That as I demed, sith the beginning
Of the world was neure seene or than
So pleasaunt a ground of none 'earthly man.

And as I sat the birds barkening thus,
Me thought that I heard voices sodainly,
t'he most sweetest and most delicious
That euer any wight I trow truly
Heard in their life, for the armony
And sweet accord was in so good musike.
That the voice to angels was most like."

There is here no affected rapture, no flowery sentiment :
the whole is an ebullition of natural delight " welling out
V I of the heart," like water from a crystal spring. Nature is
the sold of art : there is a strength as well as a simplicity
in the imagination that reposes entirely on nature, that
nothing else can supply. It was the same trust in nature,
and reliance on his subject, which enabled Chaucer to
describe the grief and patience of Griselda, the faith of
Constance, and the heroic perseverance of the little child
who, going to school through the streets of Jewry,

i<

Oh Alma redempioris mater, loudly sung,

M

o»

and who after his death still triumphed in his song.
Chaucer has more of this deep, internal, sustained senti-
ment than any other writer, except Boccaccio. In depth
of simple pathos and intensity of conception, never
swerving from his subject, I think no other writer comes
near him, not even the Greek tragedians. I wish to be
allowed to give one or two instances of what I mean. I
will take the following from the Knight's Tale. The
distress of Arcite, in consequence of his banishment from
his love, is thus described :

" Whan that Arcite to Thebes cbmen was,
Ful oft a day he swelt and said Alas,

On Chaucer and Spender. 39

For Bene his lady shall he never mo.

And shortly to concluden all his wo,

So raochel sorwe hadde never creature,

That is or shall be, while the world may dure.

His slope, his mete, his diinke is him byraft.

That lene he wex, and drie as is a shaft.

His eyen holwe, and grisly to behold,

His hewe salwe, and pale as ashen cold,

And solitary he was, and ever alone, t

And wailing all the night, making his mone.

And if he herde song or instrument,

Than wold he wepe, he mighte not be stent.

So feble were his spirites, and so low,

And changed so, that no man coude know

His speche ne his vois, though men it herd."

This picture of the sinkiiig of the heart, of the wasting
away of the body and mind, of the gradual failure of all
the faculties inder the contagion of a rankling sorrow,
cannot be surjassed. Of the same kind is his farewell to
his mistress, after he has gained her hand and lost his life
in the combat :

" Alas the wo I alas the peines stronge,
That I for you have suffered, and so longe ?
Alas the deth ! alas min Emilie I
Alas departing of our compagnie ;
Alas mm nenes queue? fllas my wif I
Min hertes ladie, ender of my lif !
"What is this world ? what axen men to have ?
Now with his love, now in his colde grave
Alone withouten any compagnie."

The ieath of Arcite is the more affecting, as it comes
after tr.umph and victory, after the pomp of sacrifice, tha
solenuities of prayer, the celebration of the gorgeous riteff
of chivalry. The descriptions of the three temples of
Mars, )f Venus, and Diana, of the ornaments and cer<^
monies used in each, with the reception given to tHA
offeriigs of the lovers, have a beauty and grandeur, much of
whicl is lost in Dryden's version. For instance, such line*
as thf following are not rendered with their true feeling :

ft

40 On Chaucer and Spenser.

*^ Why shulde I not as well eke tell you all
The purtreiture that was upon the waU
Within the temple of mighty Mard the rede —
That highte the gret temple of Mars in Trace
In thilke colde and frosty region,
Ther as Mars hath his sovereine mansion.
First on the wall was peinted a forest,
In which ther wonneth neyther man ne best,
With knotty knarry barrein trees old
Of stubbes sharpe and hidous to behold ;
In which ther ran a romble and a swougb,

' As though a storme shuld bresten eyery bough.

And again, among innmnerable terrific images of death
and slanghter painted on the wall, is this one :

" The statue of Mars upon a carte stood
Armed, and looked grim as he were wood
A wolf ther stood befome him at his fete
With eyen red, and of a man he ete."

The story of Griselda is in Boccaccio ; but the Clerk of
Oxenforde, who tells it, professes to have learned it &om
Petrarch. This story has gone all over Europe, and has
passed into a proverb. In spite of the barbariiy of the
circumstances, which are abominable, the sentiment remains
unimpaired and unalterable. It is of that kind " that heaves
no sigh, that sheds no tear ;" but it hangs upon thebeatings
of the heart ; it is a part of the very being ; it is as in-
separable from it as the breath we draw. It is ^ill and
calm as the face of death. Nothing can touch ii in its
ethereal purity : tender as the yielding flower, it is fixed
as the marble firmament. The only remonstrance she
makes, the only complaint she utters agaiast all the ill-
treatment she receives, is that single line wher^ when
turned back naked to her father's house, she says :

** Let me not like a worm go by the way."

The first outline given of the character is inimitable!:

t

" Nought fer fro thilke paleis honourable,
Wher as this markis shope his mariage, ,

\
\

1

On Chaucer and Spenser, 41

Ther stood a thorpe, of sighte delitable.
In which that poure folk of that village
Hadden hir hestes and herbergage,
And of hir labour toke hir sustenance.
After that the erthe yave hem habundance.

Among this poure folk ther dwelt a man.
Which that was holden pourest of hem all
But highe Gknl somtime senden can
His grace unto a litel oxes stall :
Janicola men of that thorpe him call.
A doughter had he, faire ynough to sight.
And Grisildis this yonge maiden hight.

^But for tc^ speke of vertuons beautee,
/Than was ^e on the fairest under Sonne:
* Ful pourely ^ostred up was she ;

^o likerous last waa in hire herte yronne ;

SHil ofter of the well than of the tonne

^He dranke, send for she wolde vertue plese,

Sh^ knew wel labour, but non idel ese.

But thoug^ tms mayden tendre were of age,

Yet in the oiifet of hire virginitee

Ther was enclosed sad and ripe coragc :

And in gret reverence and charitee

Hire olde poure fader fostred she :

A few sheep spinning on the fold she kept,

She wolde not ben idel til she slept.

And whan she homward came she wolde bring

Wortes and other herbes times oft,

The which she shred and sethe for hire living^

And made hire bed ful hard, and nothing soft :

And ay she kept hire fadres lif on loft

With every obeisance and diHgenee,

That child may don to" fadres reverence.

Upon Grisilde, this poure creature,
Ful often sithe this markis sette his sye,
As he on hunting rode paravcnture :
And whan it fell that he might hire espie,
He not with wanton loking of folic
His eyen cast on hire, but in sad wise
Upon hire chore he wold him oft aviso.

Commending in his herte hire womanhede.
And eke hire vertue, passing any wight

42 On Chaucer and Spenser.

Of BO yong age, as vel in chere as dede.
For though the people have no gret insight
In vertue, he considered fal right
Hire bountee^ and disposed that he wold
Wedde hire only, if ever he wedden shold.

Gnsilde of this {Qod wot) ful innocent,
That for hire shapen was all this array,
To fetchen water at a weUe is went.
And Cometh home as sone as ever she may.
For wel she had herd say, that thilke day
The markis shulde wedde, and, if she might.
She wolde fayn han seen som of that sight.

She thought, " I wol with other maidens stond,

That ben my felawes, in our dore, and see

The markisesse, and therto wol I fond

To don at home, as sone as it may be,

The labour which longeth unto me,

And than I may at leiser hire behold,

If she this way unto the cartel hold.

And she wolde over the threswold gon.
The markis came and gan hire for to call,
And she set doun her water-pot anon
Beside the threswold in an ozes stall,
And doun upon hire knees she gan to &I1.
And with sad countenance kneleth still,
Till she had herd what was the lordes will."

The story of the little child slain in Jewry (which is told
by the Prioress, and worthy to be told by her who was " all
conscience and tender heart ") is not less tonching than
that of Gnselda. It is simple and heroic to the last de-
gree. The poetry of Chaucer has a religious sanctiiy about
it, connected with the manners and superstitions of ^e age.
It has all the spirit of martyrdom.

It has also all the extravagance and the utmost licen-
tiousness of comic humour, equally arising out of the man-
ners of the time. In this too Chaucer resembled Boccaccio,
that he excelled in both styles, and could pass at will '^ from
grave to gay, from lively to severe ;" but he never con-
founded the two styles together (except from that involun-

On Chaucer and Spenser. 43

tary and nnconscious mixture of the pathetic and humor-
ous, which is almost always to be found in nature), and
was exclusively taken up with what he set about, whether
it was jest or earnest. The Wife of Bath's Prologue (which
Pope has very admirably modernised) is, perhaps, un-
equalled as a comic story. The Cock and the Fox is also
excellent for lively strokes of character and satire. January
and May is not so good as some of the others. Chaucer's
versification, considering the time at which he wrote, and
that versification is a thing in a great degree mechanical, is
not one of his least merits. It has considerable strength
and harmony, and its apparent deficiency in the latter
respect arises chiefly from the alterations which have since
taken place in the pronunciation or mode of accenting the
words of the language. The best general rule for reading
him is to pronounce the final e, as in reading Italian* , «^

It was observed in the last Lecture that painting de- . ^'
scribes what the object is in itself, poetry what it implies
or suggests. Chaucer's poetry is not, in general, the best
confirmation of the truth of this distinction, for his poetry
is more picturesqtie and historical than almost any other.
But there is one instance in point which I cannot help giv-
ing in this place. It is the story of the three thieves who
go in search of Death to kill him, and who,, meeting with
him, are entangled in their fate by his words without
knowing him. In the printed catalogue to Mr. West's (in
some respects very admirable) picture of Death on the
Pale Horse, it is observed, that " In poetry the same effect
is produced by a few abrupt and rapid gleams of descrip-
tion touching, as it were with fire, the features and edges
of a general mass of awful obscurity; but in painting,
such indistinctness would be a defect, and imply that the
artist wanted the power to portray the conceptions of his
fancy. Mr. West was of opinion that to delineate a
physical form, which in its moral impression would ap-
.proximate to that of the visionary Death of Milton^ it was

1

44 On Chaticer and Spenser.

necessary to endow it, if possible, with the appearance of
superhuman strength and energy. He has therefore ex-
erted the utmost force and perspicuity of his pencil on the
central figure." One might suppose from this, that the
way to represent a shadow was to make it as substantial as
possible. Oh no I Painting has its prerogatives (and high
ones they are), but they lie in representing the visible, not
the invisible. The moral attributes of Death are powers
and effects of an infinitely wide and general description,
which no individual or physical form can possibly repre-
sent but by a courtesy of speech, or by a distant analogy.
The moral impression of Death is essentially visionary ;
its reality is in the mind's eye. Words are here the oidy
thmgs, and things, physical forms, the mere mockeries of
the understanding. The less definite, the less bodily the
conception, the more vast, unformed, and unsubstantial,
the nearer does it approach to some resemblance of that
omnipresent, lasting, universal, irresistible principle, which
everywhere, and at some time or other, exerts its power
over all things. Death is a mighty abstraction, like Night,
or Space, or Time. He is an ugly customer, who will not
be invited to supper, or to sit for his picture. He is with
us and about us, but we do not see him. He stalks on
before us, and we do not mind him : he follows us close
behind, and we do not turn to look back at him. We do
not see him making faces at us in our life-time, nor per-
ceive him afterwards sitting in mock-majesty, a twin-
skeleton, beside us, tickling our bare ribs and staring into
our hollow eye-balls I Chaucer knew this. He makes
three riotous companions go in search of Death to kill
him ; they meet with an old man whom they reproach with
his age, and ask why he does not die, to which he answers

thus:

"Ne Deth, alas ! he will not ban my lif.
Thus walke I like a I'estless cuitifT,
And on the ground, which is my modrcs gate,
I knocke with my staf, erlich and late,

On Chaucer and Spenser, 45

I say to hire, ' Leve mother, letxne in.
Lo, how I vanish, flesh and blood and skin,
Alas ! when shall my bones ben at reste ?
Mother, when you wolde I changen my cheste,
That in my chambre longe time hath be,
Ye, for an heren cloute to wrap in me.*
But yet to me she will not don that grace^
For which ful pale and welked is my face."

They then ask the old man where they shall find out
Death to kill him, and he sends them on an errand which
ends in the death of all three. We hear no more of him,
bnt it is Death that they have encountered I

The interval between Chancer and Spenser is long and
'dreary. There is nothing to fill np the chasm bui the
names of Occleve, "ancient- Grower," Lydgate, Wyatt,
Surrey, and SackviHe. Spenser flourished in the reign of
Queen Elizabeth, and was sent with Sir John Dayies into
Ireland, of which he has left behind him some tender recol-
lections in his clescription of the bog of Allan, and a record
in an ably written paper, containing observations on the
state of that country and the means of improving it, which
remain in full force to the present day.* Spenser died at
an obscure inn in London, it is'supposed in distressed cir-
cumstances. The treatment he received from Burleigh is
well known. Spenser, as well as Chaucer, was engaged
in active life ; but ihe genius of his poetry was ijot active ;
it is inspired by the love of ease, and relaxation from all
the cares and business of life. Of all the poets, he is the
anost poetical. Though much later than Chaucer, his
obligations to preceding writers were less. He has in
'some measure borrowed the plan of his poem (as a number
of distinct narratives) from Ariosto ; but he has engrafted

* This was written in 1818, but unfortunately is not an obsolete
remark in 1869. Mr. Richard Morris, in his new edition of Spenser's
works, has, by a collation of MSS. copies of the poet's treatise
on Ireland, restored the text to something more like its original
purity. — Ed.

46 On ChaiAcer and Spenser.

upon it an exuberance of fancy, and an endless voluptuous-
ness of sentiment, which are not to be found in the Italian
writer. Further, Spenser is even more of an inventor in
the subject-matter. There is an originality, richness, and
variety in his allegorical personages and fictions, which
almost vies with the splendour of the ancient mythology.
If Ariosto transports us into the regions of romance,
Spenser's poetry is all fidry-land. In Ariosto, we walk
upon the ground, in a company, gay, fantastic, and adven-
turous enough. In Spenser, we wander in another world

[ among ideal beings. The poet takes and lays us in the lap
of a lovelier nature, by ttie sound of softer streams, among

' greener hills and fairer valleys. He paints nature, not as
we find it, but as we expected to find it, and fulfils the
delightful promise of our youth. He waves his wand
of enchantment, and at once embodies airy beings, and
throws a delicious veil over all actual objects. The two
worlds of realiiy and of fiction are poised on the wings of

"^his imagination. His ideas, indeed, seem more distinct
than his perceptions. He is the painter of abstractions,

^and describes them with dazzling minuteness. In the
Mask of Cupid he makes the God of Love '* clap on high
his coloured wings twain ;" and it is said of Gluttony, in
the Procession of the Passions :

" In green vine leaves he was right fitly clad."

At times he becomes picturesque from his intense love of
beauty ; as where he compares Prince Arthur's crest to the
appearance of the almond tree :

" Upon the top of all his lofty crest,

A bunch of hairs discolonr'd diversely
With sprinkled pearl and gold full richly drest

Did shake, and seem'd to datmce for jollity ;
Like to an almond tree ymounted high

On top of green Selenis all alone,
With blossoms brave bedecked daintily ;

Her tender locks do tremble every one
At every little breath that under heav'n is blown."

♦•

I

On Chaucer and Spenser. 47

The love of beauty^ Jbowever, and not of trutii, is the
moving pnnciple of his mind ; and he is guided in his
fantasEc' deIineatieB«t by no rule but the impulse of an
inexhaustible imagination. He luxuriates equally in scekies
of Eastern magnificence or the still solitude of a hermit's
cell, in the extremes of sensuality or refinement.

In reading the Faery Queen, you see a little withered old
man by a wood- side opening a wicket, a giant, and a dwarf
lagging fjEur behind, a damsel in a boat upon an enchanted
lake, wood-nymphs, and satyrs ; and all of a sudden you
are transported into a lofty palace, with tapers burning,
amidst knights and ladies, with dance and revelry, and
« song, ^ and mask, and antique pageantry." What can be
more solitary, more shut up in itself, than his description of
the house of Sleep, to which Archimago sends for a dream :

^' And more to lull him in Ms slmnber soft

A trickling stream from high rock tumbling down,
And ever-drizzling rain upon the loft,

Mix*d with a murmuring wind, much like the sound
Of swarming Bees, did cast him in a swound.

No other noise, nor people's troublous cries.
That still are wont t' annoy the walled town

Might there be heard ; but careless Quiet lies
Wrapt in eternal silence, far from enemies."

It is as if "the honey-heavy dew of slumber" had settled
on his pen in writing these lines. How different in the
subject (and yet how like in beauty) is the following
description of the Bower of Bliss :

^ Eftsoones they heard a most melodious sound

Of all that mote delight a daintie eare ;
Such as attonce might not on living ground,

Save in this Paradise, be heard elsewhere :
Bight hard it was for wight which did it heare,

To tell what manner musicke that mote bee ;
For all that pleasing is to living eare

Was there consorted in one harmonee :
Birdes, voices, instruments, windes, waters, aU agree.

48 On Chaucer and Spenaer.

The joyous birdes shrouded in chearefull shade

Their notes unto the voice attempred sweet :
Th' angelical soft trembling voyces made

To th' instrmnents divine respondence meet.
The silver sounding instruments did meet

With the base murmur of the waters fall ;
The water's fall with dijfference discreet,

Now soft, now loud, unto the wind did call ;
The gentle warbling wind low answered to all."

The remainder of the passage has all that yoluptuous
pathos and languid brilliancy of fancy, in which this
writer excelled :

*^ The whiles some one did chaunt this lovely lay ;

Ah ! see, whoso fayre thing doest faine to see.
In springing flowre-the image of thy day !

Ah I see the Virgin Hose, how sweetly shee
Doth first peepe foorth with bashfull modestee,

That fairer seemes the lesse ye see her may !
Lo ! see soone after, how more bold and free

Her bared bosome she doth broad display;
Lo ! see soone after how she fades and falls away !

So passeth in the passing of a day

Of mortal life the leafe, the bud, the flowre ;
Ne more doth florish after first decay,

That earst wa» sought to deck both bed and bowie
Of many a lady and many a Paramowre I

Gather therefore the Rose whilest yet is prime,
For soon comes age that will her pride deflowre ;

Gather the Rose of love whilest yet is time,
Whilest loving thou mayest loved be with equall crime.*

He ceasf ; and then gan all the quire of birdes

Their diverse notes t' attune unto his lay,
As in approvaunce of his pleasing wordes.

The constant payre heard all that he did say.
Yet swarved not, but kept their forward way

Through many covert groves and thickets dose^
In which they creeping did at last display f

That wanton lady with her lover lose,
Whose sleepie head she in her lap did soft dispose.

* Taken from Tasso.
t Spenser's Poems, ed. Morris, pp. 152-3. — ^Ed.

On CJiaucer and Spenser. 49

Upon a bed of Eoses she was laid

As faint through heat, or dight to pleasant sin ;
And was arayd or rather disarayd^

All in a vele of silke and silver thin,
That hid no whit her alablaster skin,

But rather shewd more white, if more might bee :
More subtile web Arachne cannot spin ; •

Nor the fine nets, which oft we woven see
Of scorched deaw, do not in th' ayre more lightly flee.

Her snowy brest was bare to ready spoyle

Of hungry eies which n' ote therewith be fild ;
And yet through languour of her late sweet toyle

Few drops more cleare than Nectar forth distild,
That like pure Orient perles adown it trild ;

And her faire eyes sweet smyling in delight
Moystened their fiery beames, with which she thrild

Fraile harts, yet quenched not ; like starry light.
Which sparcklingon the silent waves does seeme more bright/*

The finest things in Spenser are, the character of Una
in the first book, the House of Pride, the Cave of Mam-
mon, and the Cave of Despair : the account of Memory,
of whom it is said, among other things :

" The wars he well remembered of King Nine,
Of old Assaracus and Inachus divine ;"

the description of Belphoebe ; the story of Florimel and
the Witch's son ; the gardens of Adonis, and the Bower
of Bliss ; the Mask of Cupid ; and Colin Clout's vision,
V in the last book. 'But some people will say that all this
may be very fine, but that they cannot understand it on
account of the allegory. They are a&aid of the allegory,
as if they thought it would bite them : they look at it as a
child looks at a painted dragon, and think it will strangle
them in its shining folds. This is very idle. If they do
not meddle with the allegory, the allegory will not meddle
with them. Without minding it at all, the whole is 9»
plain as a pike-stafiT. It might as well be pretended that
we cannot see Poussin's pictures for the allegory, as that
the allegory prevents us from understanding Spenser.

50 On Chaucer and Spenser.

For instance, wlien Britomart, seated amidst young war-
riors, lets fall her hair and discovers her sex, is it necessary
to know the part she plays in the allegory, to understand
the beauty of the following stanza ?

^^ And eke that stranger knight amongst the rest

Vas for like need enforced to disarray.
Tho when as vailed was her lofty crest,

Her golden locks that were in trammels gay
Upbounden, did themselves adown display,

And ranght unto her heels like sunny beams
That in a cloud their light did long time stay ;

Their vapour faded, shew their golden gleams,
And through the persant air shoot forth their azure streams."

Or is there any mystery in what is said of Belphoebe,that

her hair was sprinkled with flowers and blossoms which

had been entangled in it as she fled through the woods ?

Or is it necessary to have a more distinct idea of Proteus,

than that which is given of him in his boat, with the

frighted Florimel at his feet, while

" the cold icicles from his rough beard

Dropped adown upon her snowy breast ?

Or is it not a sufficient account of one of the sea-gods that

pass by them, to say :

" That was Arion crowned : —
So went he playing on the watery plain."

Or to take the Procession of the Passions that draw the
coach of Pride, in which the figures of Idleness, of Glut-
tony, of Lechery, of Avarice, of Envy, and of Wrath
speak, one should think, plain enough for themselves ; such
as this of Gluttony :*

" And by his side rode loathsome Gluttony,

Deformed creature, on a filthie swjme ;
His belly was upblowne with luxury ;

And eke with fatnesse swollen were his eyne ;
And like a Crane his necke was long and fyne,

With which he swallowed up excessive feast,
For want whereof poore people oft did pyne.

* Spenser's Works, ed. Morris, p. 29. — ^Ed. ■■ » •

On dxaucer and Spenser. 51

In green vine leaves he was right fitly dad.

For other clothes he could not weare for heate :
And on his head an yvie girland had.

From under which fast trickled downe tlie sweat :
Still as he rode, he somewhat still did eat.

And in his hand did heare a bouzing can,
Of which he supt so oft, that on his seat

His dronken corse he scarce upholden can ;
In shape and life more like a monster then a man.**

Or this of Lechery :

" And next to him rode lustfull Lechery

Upon a bearded Gote, whose rugged heare
And whally eyes (the sign^ of gelosy)
^ Was like the person selfe whom he did heare :

Who roughe and blacke, and filthy did appear.

Unseemely man to please fair Ladies eye :
Yet he of ladies oft was loved deare.

When fairer faces were bid standen by :
•O ! who does know the bent of womens fantasy ?

' In a greene gowne he clothed was full faire,

Which underneath did hide his filthiness ;
And in his hand a burning hart he bare.

Full of vain follies and new fanglenesse ;
For he was false and fraught with ficklenesse.

And learned had to love with secret lookes ;
And well could daunce, an^sing with ruefulnesse;

And fortunes tell, and read in loving bookes;
And thousand other waies to bait his fleshly hooke&

Inconstant man that loved all he saw,
And lusted after all that he did love ;

Ne would his looser life be tied to law ;
But joyd weak womens hearts to tempt and prove.

If from their loyall loves he might them move."

This is pretty plain-spoken. Mr. Southey says of Spenser:

" Yet not more sweet

Than pure was he, and not more pure than wise ;
High priest of all tlie Muses* mysteries T

On the contrary, no one was more apt to pry into mysterioa
which do not strictly belong to the Muses,

52 On Chaucer and Spenser.

Of the same kind with the Procession of the Passions,
as little obscure, and still more beautiful, is the Mask of
Cupid, with his train of votaries ^

" The first was Fancy, like a lovely boy.
Of rare aspect, and beauty without peer ;

His garment neither was of silk nor say.

But painted plumes in goodly order dight,
Like as the sun-burnt Indians do array

Their tawny bodies in their proudest plight ;
As those same plumes so seem'd he vain and light»

That by his gait might easily appear ;
For still he far'd as dancing in delight,

And in his hand a windy fan did bear
That in the idle air he mov'd still here and there.

And him beside march'd amorous Desire,

Who seem'd of riper years than th' other swain,
Yet was that other swain this elder's sire.

And gave him being, common to them twain :
His garment was disguised very vain,

And his embroidered bonnet sat awry ;
Twixt both his hands few sparks he close did strain.

Which still he blew, and kindled busily.
That soon they life conceived and forth in flames did fly.

Next after him went Doubt, who was yclad

In a discolour'd coat of strange disguise.
That at his back a broad capuccio had.

And sleeves dependant Albanese-wise ;
He lookt askew with his mistrustful eyes.

And nicely trod, as thorns lay in his way.
Or that the floor to shrink he did avise ;

And on a broken reed he still did stay
His feeble steps, which shrunk when hard thereon he lay*

With him went Daunger, cloth'd in ragged weed,

Made of bear's skin, that him more dreadful made l
Yet his own face was dreadful!, ne did need

Strange horror to deform his grissly shade ;
A net in th' one hand, and a rusty blade

In th' other was ; this Mischiefe, that Mishap ;
With th' one his foes he threat'ned to invade,

With th' other he his friends meant to enwTap ;
For whom he could not kill he practiz'd to entrap.

On Chaicce7' and Spenser, 53

Next him was Fear, all ann'd from top to toe.

Yet thought himselfe not safe enough thereby,
But fear*d each shadow moving to and fro ;

And his own arms when glittering he did spy.
Or clashing heard, he fast away did fly.

As ashes pale of hue, and winged-heeVd ;
And evermore on Daunger fixt liis eye,

'Gainst whom he always bent a brazen shield.
Which his right hand unarmed fearfully did wield.

With him went Hope in rank, a handsome maid.

Of chearfull look and lovely to behold ;
In silken samite she was light array'd,

And her fair locks were woven up in gold ;
She always smird, and in her hand did hold

An holy-water sprinkle dipt in dew.
With which she sprinkled favours manifold

On whom she list, and did great liking shew :
Great liking unto many, but true love to few.

Next after them, the winged God himself

Came riding on a lion ravenous.
Taught to obey the menage of that elfe

That man and beast with power imperious
"Subdueth to his kingdom tyrannous :

His blindfold eyes he bade awhile unbind.
That his proud spoil of that same dolorous

Fair dame he might behold in perfect kind ;
Which seen, he much rejoiced in his cruel mind.

Of which full proud, himself uprearing high,

He looked round about with stem disdain.
And did survey his goodly company :

And marshalling the evil-ordered train.
With that the darts which his right hand did strain^

Full dreadfully he shook, that all did quake.
And clapt on high his colour'd winges twain.

That all his many it afraid did make :
Tho blinding him again, his way he forth did take."

The description of Hope, in this series of historical por-
traits, is one of the most beantifnl in Spenser : and the
tritimph of Cupid at the mischief he has made is worthy
of the malicious urchin deity. In reading these descrip-
tions, one can hardly avoid being reminded of Eubens'

54 On ChaiLcer and Spenser.

allegorical pictures; but the account of Satyrane taming
the lion's whelps and lagging the bear's cubs along in
his arms while yet an in&nt, whom his mother so natur-
ally advises to '^go seek some other play-feUows," has
even more of this high picturesque character. Nobody
but Bubens could have painted the fancy of Spenser; and
he could not have given the sentiment, the airy dream that
hovers over it I .

With all this, Spenser neither makes us laugh nor weep.
The only jest in his poem is an allegorical play upon
words, where he describes Malbecco as escaping in the
herd of goats, " by the help of his fayre horns on hight."

^ But he has been unjustly charged with a want of passion
and of strength. He has both in an immense degree.
He has not indeed the pathos of immediate action or suf-
fering, which is more properly the dramatic ; but he has
all the patixos of sentiment and romance — all that belongs
to distant objects of terror, and uncertain, imaginary dis-
tress. His strength, in like manner, is not strength of will
or action, of bone and muscle, nor is it coarse and pal-
pable — ^but it assimies a character of vastness and sub-
limity seen through the same visionary medium, and
blended with the appalling associations of preternatural

^agency. We need only turn, in proof of this, to the Cave
of Despair, or the Cave of Mammon, or to the account of
the change of Malbecco into Jealousy. The following
stanzas, in the description of the Cave of Mammon, the
grisly house of Plutus, are unrivalled for the portentous
massiness of the forms, the splendid chiaro-oscuro, and
shadowy horror :

'^ That house's form within was rude and strong.
Like an huge cave hewn out of rocky clift,
From whose rough vault the ragged breaches hung.

Embossed with massy gold of glorious gift,
And with rich metal loaded every rift,
That heavy ruin they did seem to threat :
*" And over them Arachne high did lift

On Chaucer and Spenser. 65

r

Her cunning web, and spread her snbtle net.
Enwrapped in foul smoke, and clouds more black than jet.

Both roof and floor, and walls, were all of gold,

But overgrown with dust and old decay,*
And hid in darkness that none could behold

The hue thereof : for view of cheerful day
Did never in that house itself display^

But a faint shadow of uncertain light ;
Such as a lamp whose life doth fade away ;

Or as the moon clothed with cloudy night

Does shew to him that walks in fear and sad.affiright.

*******

And over all sad Horror with grim hue

Did always soar, beating his iron wings ;
And after him owls and night-ravens flew,

The hateful messengers of heavy things,
Of death and dolour telling sad tidings ; ,

Whiles sad Celleno, sitting on a clift,
A song of bitter bale and sorrow siugs,

That heart of flint asunder could have rift.
Which having ended, after him she flieth swift."

•

The Cave of Despair is described with equal gloominess

and power of fancy ; and the flne moral declamation of

the owner of it on the evils of life almost makes one in

love with death. In the story of Malbecco, who is haunted

by Jealousy, and in vain strives to run away from his own

thoughts —

"High over hill and over dale ho flies'* —

the truth of human passion and the preternatural ending
are equally striking. It is not fair to compare Spenser
with Shakspeare in point of interest. A fairer com-
parison would be with Comus ; and the result would not
be unfavourable to Spenser. There is only one work of
the same allegorical kind, which has more interest than

♦ " That all with one consent praise new-born gauds,
Tho' they are made and moulded of things past.
And give to Dust, that is a little gilt,
More laud than gold o'er-dusted."

[Shakspeare's Troiliu and Cressida, iii. 3.]

66 On Chaucer and Spenser,

Spenser (with scarcely less imagination) : and that is the
Pilgrim's Progress. The three first books of the Faery
Queen are very superior to the three last. One would
think that Pope, who used to ask if any one had ever
read the Faery Queen through, had only dipped into
these last. The only things in them equal to the former
are the account of Talus, the Iron Man, and the delightful
episode of Pastorella.

The language of Spenser is full and copious to over-
flowing : it is less pure and idiomatic than Chaucer's, and
^. is enriched and adorned with phrases borrowed from the

different languages of Europe, both ancient and modem.
He was, probably, seduced into a certain license of ex-
pression by the difficulty of filling up the moulds of his
complicated rhymed stanza from the limited resources of
bis native language. This stanza, with alternate and
repeatedly recurring rhymes, is borrowed from the Italians.
It was peculiarly fitted to their language, which abounds
in similar vowel terminations, and is as little adapted to
ours, from the stubborn, unaccommodating resistance
which the consonant endings of the northern languages
make to this sort of endless sing-song. Not that I would,
on that account, part with the stanza of Spenser. We
are, perhaps, indebted to this very necessity of finrliT^
out new forms of expression, and to the occasional faults
to which it led, for a poetical language rich and varied
and magnificent beyond aU former, and almost all later,
example. His versification is at once the most smooth
] and the most sounding in the language. It is a labyrinth
'of sweet sounds, "in many a winding bout of linked
sweetness long drawn out," that would cloy by their
very sweetness, but that the ear is constantly relieved and
enchanted by their continued variety of modulation,
dwelling on the pauses of the action, or flowing on in a
fuller tide of harmony with the movement of the senti-
ment. It has not the bold dramatic transitions of Shak-

On Chaucer and Spenser, 57

■j3X>eare's blank verse, nor the high-raised tone of Milton's ;
hnt it is the perfection of melting harmony, dissolving the
80ul in pleasure, or holding it captive in the chaips of
suspense. Spenser was the poet of our waking dreams ;
and he has invented not only a language, but a music of
his own for them. The undulations are infinite, like
those of the waves of the sea ; but the effect is still the
same, lulling the senses into a deep oblivion of the jarring
noises of the world, from which we have no wish to be
ever recalled.

( 58 )

.«

LECTURE in.

ON SHAKSFEABE AND MILTON.

In looking back to the great works of genius in former
times, we are sometimes disposed to wonder at the little
progress which has since been made in poetry, and in the
arts of imitation in general. But this is perhaps a foolish
wonder. Nothing can be more contrary to the feet, than
the supposition that in what we understand by the fine
artSy as painting and poetry, relative perfection is only
the result of repeated efiforts in successive periods, and
that what has been once well done, constantly leads to
something better. What is mechanical, reducible to rule,
or capable of demonstration, is progressive, and admits of
gradual improvement : what is not mechanical, or definite,
but depends on feeling, taste, and genius, very soon
becomes stationary or retrograde, and loses more than it
gains by transfusion. * The contrary opinion is a vulgar
error which has grown up, like many others, from trans-
ferring an analogy of one kind to something quite distinct,
without taking into the account the difference in the
nature of the things, or attending to the difference of the
results. For most persons, finding what wonderful ad-
vances have been made in biblical criticism, in chemistry,
in mechanics, in geometry, astronomy, &c., t. e, in things
depending on mere inquiry and experiment or on absolute
demonstration, have been led hastily to conclude that
there was a general tendency in the efforts of the human
intellect to improve by repetition, and, in all other arts
and institutions, to grow perfect and mature by time.

On Shak^eare and Milton. 59*

We look back npon the theological creed of our ancestors,*
and their discoveries in natural philosophy, with a smile
of pity : science, and the arts connected with it, have all
had their infancy, their youth and manhood, and seem to
contain in them no principle of limitation or decay : and,
inquiring no further about the matter, we infer in the
intoxication of our pride and the height of our self-con-
gratulation, that the same progress has been made, and
will continue to be made, in all other things which are
the work of man. The fact, however, stares us so plainly
in the face, that one would think the smallest reflection
must suggest the truth, and overturn our sanguine
p theories. . The greatest poets, the ablest orators, the best
painters, and the finest sculptors that the world ever saw,
appeared soon after the birth of these arts, and lived in a
state of .society which was, in other respects, compara- |
tively barbarous. Those arts, which depend on individual
genius and incommunicable power, have always leaped at .
once from infancy to manhood, from the first rude dawn
of invention to their meridian height and dazzling lustre,

L and have in general declined ever after. This is the
peculiar distinction and privilege of each, of science and
of art : of the one, never to attain its utmost limit of
perfection ; and of the other, to arrive at it almost at once.
Homer, Chaucer, Spenser, Shakspeare, Dante, and Ariosto
(Milton alone was of a later age, and not the worse for it) :
Eaphael, Titian, Michael Angelo, Correggio, Cervantfes^
and Boccaccio : the Greek sculptors and tragedians : all
lived near the beginning of their arts, perfected, and all
but created them. These giant-sons of genius stand
indeed upon the earth, but they tower above their fellows ;
and the long line of their successors, in different ages,

' does not interpose any object to obstruct their view, or

i * The high-churchmen of the present day cling, on the contrary,
with singular tenacity to the " theological creed of our ancestors,"
without, perhaps, being aware of it. — Ed.

60 On Shakspeare and MiUon.

lessen their brightness. In strength and stature theji^Lre
nnrivalled ; in grace and beauty tiiey have not been sur-
passed. In after-ages and moro refined periods (as they <
are caUed) great men have arisen, one by one, as it were
by throes and at intervals ; though in general the best of
i these cultivated and artificial minds were of an inferior J
I order, as Tasso and Pope among poets : Guido and Van-
{ dyke among painters. But in the earlier stages of the
I arts, as soon as the first mechanical difi&culties had been got
' over, and the language was sufficiently acquired, they rose
by clusters and in constellations, never so to rise again!

The arts of painting and poetry are conversant with
the world of thought within us, and with the world of
sense around us — with what we know, and see, and feel
intimately.. They flow from the sacred shrine of our own
breasts, and are kindled at the living lamp of nature.
But the pulse of the passions assuredly beat as high, the
depths and soundings of the human heart were as well
understood three thousand or three hundred years ago,
as they are at present: the face of nature and "the
human face divine " shone as bright then as they have
ever done. But it is their light, reflected by true genius
on art, that marks out its path before it, and sheds a
glory round the Muses' feet, like that which

" Circled Una's angel face,
And made a sunshine in the shady place."

The four greatest names in English poetry are almost ^
the four first we come to : Chaucer, Spenser, Shakspeare, i
and Milton. There are no others that can really be put
in competition with these. The two last have had justice
done them by the voice of common fame. Their names
are blazoned in the very firmament of reputation ; whfle
the two first (though "the fault has been more in their
stars than in themselves that they are underlings "), either
never emerged far above the horizon, or were too soon
involved in the obscurity of time. The three first of

On Shakspeare and Milton. 61

these are excluded from Dr. Johnson's Lives of the Poets *
(Shakspeare indeed is so from the dramatic form of his
compositions) : and the fourth, Milton, is admitted with a
reluctant and churlish ^elcome.

In comparing these four writers together, it might be

r^ said that Chaucer excels as the poet of manners, or of
real life ; Spenser, as the poet of romance ; Shakspeare as
the poet of nature (in the largest use of the term) ; and
Milton, as the poet of morality. Chaucer most frequently
describes things as they are; Spenser, as we wish them
to be ; Shakspeare, as they wdmd be ; and Milton as they
ought to be. As poets, and as great poets, imagination,
that is, thg^LQifer of feigning things according to nature,
was common to them all: but the principle or moving
"power, to which this faculty was most subsery j^ pt in
Chaucer, was habit or inveterate prejudice; in Spenser,
novelty, and the love of the marvellous ; in Shakspeare, it
was the force of p^assion, combined with every variety of pos-
sible circumstances ; and in Milton, [combined] only with
the highest. The characteristic of Chaucer is intensity; of
Spenser, remoteness ; of Milton, elevation ; of Shakspeare,

L. everything. It has been said by some critic, that Shak*
speare was distinguished from the other dramatic writers
of his day only by his wit ; that they had all his other
qualities but that; that one writer had as much sense,
another as much fancy, another as much knowledge of
character, another the same depth of passion, and another
as great a power of language. This statement is not true ^
nor is the inference from it well-founded, even if it were.
This person does not seem to have been aware that, upon
his own showing, the great distinction of Shakspeare*s
genius was its virtually including the genius of all the
gi'eat men of his age, and not his differing from them in
one accidental particular. But to have done with such
minute and literal trifling.
* This work does not-comprise any writer anterior to Cowley. — Ed..

<02 On ShaJcspeare and Milton.

The striking peculiarity of Shakspeare's mind was its
\ generic quality, its power of communication with all other
I minds, so that it contained a universe of thought and
> feeling within itself, and had no one peculiar bias or
exclusive excellence more than another. He was just like
any other man, but that he was like all other men. He
was the least of an egotist that it was possible to be. He
was nothing in himself; but he was all that others were,
or that they could become. He not only had in himself
the germs of every faculty and feeling, but he coul^
follow them by anticipation, intuitively, into all their
'Conceivable ramifications, through every change of fortune
or conflict of passion, or turn of thought. He had '' a
mind reflecting ages past" and present: all the people
Ihat ever lived are there. There was no respect of persons
with him. His genius shone equally on the evil and on
the good, on the wise and the foolish, the monarch and
ihe beggar. ^^ All comers of the earth, kings, queens, and
states, maids, matrons, nay, the secrets of the grave," are
hardly hid from his searching glance. He was like the
genius of humanity, changing places with all of us at
pleasure, and playing with our purposes as with his own.
He turned the globe round for his amusement, and sur-
veyed the generations of men, and the individuals as they
passed, with their different concerns, passions, follies,
vices, virtues, actions, and motives — as well those that
they knew, as those which they did not know, or acknow-
ledge to themselves. The dreams of childhood, the
ravings of despair, were the toys of his fancy. Airy
beings waited at his call, and came at his bidding.
Harmless fairies " nodded to him, and did him courtesies :"
and the night-hag bestrode the blast at the command of
"his so potent art." The world of spirits lay open to
him, like the world of real men and women : and there is
the same truth in his delineations of the one as of the
other; for if the preternatural characters he describes

On Shakspeare and Milton. 63

eonld be supposed to exist, they would speak, and feel,
and act, as he makes them. He had only to think of
anything in order to become that thing, with all the
circumstances belonging to it. When he conceived of a
character, whether real or imaginary, he not only entered
into all its thoughts and feelings, but seemed instantly,
and as if by touching a secret spring, to be surrounded
with all the same objects, "subject to the same skyey
influences," the same local, outward, and unforeseen
accidents which would occur in reality. Thus the cha-
racter of Caliban not only stands before us with a language
and manners of its own, but the scenery and situation of
the enchanted island he inhabits, the traditions of the
place, its strange noises, its hidden recesses, ** his frequent
haunts and ancient neighbourhood," are given with a
miraculous truth of nature, and with all the familiarity
of an old recollection. The whole " coheres semblably
together " in time, place, and circumstance. In reading
this author, you do not merely learn what his characters
say : you see their persons. By something expressed or
understood, you are at no loss to decipher their peculiar
physiognomy, the meaning of a look, the grouping, the
1»y-play, as we might see it on the stage. A word, an
epithet, paints a whole scene, or throws us back whole
years in the history of the person represented. So (as it
has been ingeniously remarked) when Prospero describes
himself as left alone in the boat with his daughter, the
epithet which he applies to her, " Me and thy cryiTig self,"
flings the imagination instantly back from the grown
woman to the helpless condition of infancy, and places
the first and most trying scene of his misfortunes before
us, with all that he must have suffered in the interval.
How well the silent anguish of Macduff is conveyed to
ihe reader, by the friendly expostulation of Malcolm :
"What, man! ne'er pull your hat upon your brows."
Again, Hamlet, in the scene with Bosencrantz and Guilden-

64 On Shakspeare and Milton.

stem, somewliat abruptly concludes his fine soliloquy on
life by saying, " Man delights not me, nor woman neither,
though by your smiling you seem to say so." Which i&
explained by their answer — "My lord, we had no such
stuff in our thoughts. But we smiled to think, if you
delight not in man, what lenten entertainment the players
shall receive from you, whom we met on the way :" — as
if, while Hamlet was making this speech, his two old
schooKellows from Wittenberg had been really standing
by, and he had seen them smiling by stealth at the idea
of the players crossing their minds. It is not " a com*
bination and a form" of words, a set speech or two, a
preconcerted theory of a character, that will do this : but
all the persons concerned must have been present in the
poet's imagination, as at a kind of rehearsal ; and what-
ever would have passed through their minds on the occa-
sion, and have been observed by others, passed through
his, and is made known to the reader. I may add in.
passing, that Shakspeare always gives the best directions
for the costume and carriage of his heroes. Thus to take
one example, Ophelia gives the following account of
Hamlet ; and as Ophelia had seen Hamlet, I should think
her word ought to be taken against that of any modem
authority :

" Ophelia. My lord, as I "was sewing in my closet,
Lord Hamlet, with his doublet all imbrac'd.
No hat upon his head, his stockings foul'd,
Ungartered, and down-gyvM to his ancle,
Fale as his shirt, his knees knocking each other,
And with a look so piteous in purport,
As if he had been loosed out of hell
To speak of horrors — ^he comes before me.

Polonius. Mad for thy love !

Oph. My lord, I do not know,
But, truly, I do fear it.

Pol What said he?

Oph. He took me by the wrist, and held me hard ;
Then goes he to the length of all his arm ;
And, with his other hand thus o'er his brow»

On ShaJcspeare and Milton. 65

He falls to such perusal of my face.

As he would draw it. Long staid he so ;

At last, a little shaking of mine arm,

And thrice his head thus waving up and down,

He rais'd a sigh so piteous and profound,

As it did seem to shatter all his bulk, «

And end his being. That done, he lets mo go,

And with his head o'er his shoulder tum'd.

He seem*d to find his way without his eyes ;

For out o* doors he went without their help,

And, to the last^ bended their light on me." *

How after this airy, fantastic idea of irregular grace and
bewildered melancholy any one can play Hamlet, as we
have seen it played, with stmt, and stare, and antic, rights
angled, sharp-pointed gestures, it is difficnlt to say, nnless
it be that Hamlet is not bonnd, by the prompter's cue,
to study the part of Ophelia. The account of Ophelia's
death begins thus :

" There is a willow hanging o'er a brook.
That shows its hoary leaves in the glassy stream."

Now this is an instance of the same unconscions power of
mind which is as true to nature as itsel£ The leaves of
the willow are, in fact, white underneath, and it is this part
of them which would appear '^ hoary " in the reflection in
the brook. The same sort of intuitive power, the same
faculty of bringing every object in nature, whether present
or absent, before the mind's eye, is observable in the speech
of Cleopatra, when conjecturing what were the employ-
ments of Antony in his absence : '^ He's speaking now, or
murmuring, where's my serpent of old Nile ?" How fine
to make Cleopatra have this consciousness of her own char-
acter, and to make her feel that it is this for which Antony
is in love with her ! She says, after the battle of Actium,
when Antony has resolved to risk another fight, '^ It is my
birth-day ; I had thought to have held it poor : but since
my lord is Antony again, I will be Cleopatra." What

♦ Act II. Scene 1.

r

66 On Shaksj^eare and MiUon.

other poet wonld have thought of such a casual resource of
the imagination, or would have dared to avail himself of
it ? The thing happens in the play as it might have hap-
pened in fact. That which, perhaps, more than anything
else distinguishes the dramatic productions of Shakspeare
from all otiiers, is this wonderful truth and individuality
of conception. Each of his characters is as much itself,
and as absolutely independent of the rest as well as of the
author, as if they were living persons, not fictions of the
mind. The poet may be said, for the time, to identify
himself with the character he wishes to represent, and to
pass from one to another, like^ the same soul succes^vely
animating different bodies. By an art like that of the
ventriloquist, he throws his imagination out of himself and
xoakes every word appear to proceed from the mouth of the
person in whose name it is given. His plays alone are
properly expressions of the passions, not descriptions of
them. His characters are real beings of flesh and blood ;
they speak like men, not like authors. One might sup-
pose that he had stood by at the time, and overheard what
passed. As in our dreams we hold conversations with
ourselves, make remarks, or communicate intelligence, and
have no idea of the answer which we shall receive, and
which we ourselves make, till we hear it : so the dialogues
in Shakspeare are carried on without any consciousness
of what is to follow, without any appearance of preparation
or premeditation. The gusts of passion come and go like
sounds of music borne on the wind. Nothing is made out
by formal inference and analogy, by climax and antithesis :
all comes, or seems to come, immediately from nature.
iSach object and circumstance exists in his mind, as it
would have existed in reality : each several train of thought
and feeling goes on of itself, without confusion or effort.
In the world of his imagination, everything has a life, a
place and being of its own I

Chaucer's characters are sufficiently distinct from one

On ShaJcspeare and Milton. 67

Another, but they are too little varied in themselves, too
much like identical propositions. They are consistent,
but uniform ; we get no new idea of them from first to
last ; they are not placed in different lights, nor are their
subordinate traits brought out in new situations ; they are
like portraits or physiognomical studies, with the dis-
tinguishing features marked with inconceivable truth and
precision, but that preserve the same unaltered air and
attitude. Shakspeare's are historical figures, equally true
und correct, but put into action, where every nerve and
muscle is displayed in the struggle with others, with all
i;he effect of collision and contrast, with every variety of
light and shade. Chaucer's characters are narrative, Shak- I
fipeare's dramatic, Milton's epic. That is, Chaucer told I
only as much of his story as he pleased, as was required '
for a particular purpose. He answered for his characters
himself. In Shakspeare they are introduced upon the stage,
are liable to be asked all sorts of questions, and are forced
to answer for themselves. In Chaucer we perceive a fixed
essence of character. In Shakspeare there is a continual
j composition and decomposition of its elements, a fermen-
^ tation of every particle in the whole mass, by its alternate
affinity or antipathy to other principles which are brought
in contact with it. Till the experiment is tried, we do not
know the result, the turn which the character will take in
its new circumstances. Milton took only a few simple
principles of character, and raised them to the utmost con-
ceivable grandeur, and refined them from every base alloy*
His imagination, " nigh sphered in Heaven," claimed kin-
dred only with what he saw from that height, and could
raise to the same elevation with itself. He sat retired and
kept his state alone, " playing with wisdom ;" while Shak-
speare mingled with the crowd, and played the host, " to
make society the sweeter welcome."

The passion in Shakspeare is of the same nature as his
delineation of character. It is not some one habitual feel-

68 On ShaJcspeare and MiUan,

ing or sentiment preying upon itself, growing out of itself^
and moulding everything to itseK ; it is passion modified
by passion, by all the other feelings to which the indi-
vidual is liable, and to which others are liable with him;
subject to all the fluctuations of caprice and accident ; caU->
ing into play all the resources of the understanding and
all the energies of the will ; irritated by obstacles or yield-^
ing to them ; rising from small beginnings to its utmost
height ; now drunk with hope, now stung to madness, now
sunk in despair, now blown to air with a breath, now raging
like a torrent. The human soul is made the sport of for-
tune, flie prey of adversity : it is stretched on the wheel of
destiny, in restless ecstasy. The passions are in a state
of prcg'ection. Years are melted down to moments, and
every instant teems with fate. We know the results, we
see the process. Thus after lago has been boasting to
himself of the effect of his poisonous suggestions on the
mind of Othello, which, " with a little act upon the blood,
burn like the mines of sulphur," he adds :

" Look where he comes ! not poppy, nor mandragora.
Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world,
Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep
Which thou ow*dst yesterday."

And he enters at this moment, like the crested serpent,
crowned with his wrongs and raging for revenge! The
whole depends upon the turn of a thought. A word, a
look, blows the spark of jealousy into a flame ; and the
explosion is immediate and terrible as a volcano. The
dialogues in Lear, in Macbeth, that between Brutus and
Cassius, and nearly all those in Shakspeare, where the
interest is wrought up to its highest pitch, afford examples
of this dramatic fluctuation of passion. The interest iu
Chaucer is quite different ; it is like the course of a river,
strong, and full, and increasing. In Shakspeare, on the
contrary, it is like the sea, agitated this way and that, and
loud-lashed by furious storms ; while in the still pauses

L

On Shdkspeare and Milton. 69

of the blast we distinguish only the cries of despair, or
the silence of death I Milton, on the other hand, takes the
imaginatiYe part of passion — that which remains after
the event, which the mind reposes on when all is over,
which looks npon circnmstances from the remotest eleva-
tion of thought and fancy, and abstracts them from the
^ world of action to that of contemplation. The objects of '
^ dramatic poetry affect us by sympathy, by their nearness &
to ourselves, as they take us by surprise, or force us upon
action, " while rage with rage doth sympathise :" the ob-
jects of ^mcpoetry affect us through the medium of the
imagination, by magnitude and distance, by their peinna-
nence and universality. The one fills us with terror and
pity, the other with admiration and delight. There are /
certain objects that strike the imagination, and inspire -
awe in the very idea of them, independently of any dra-
matic interest, that is, of .any connection with the vicissi- -
tudes of human life. For instance, we cannot think of -
the pyramids of Egypt, of a Gothic ruin, or an old Boman
encampment, without a certain emotion, a sense of power
and sublimity coming over the mind. The heavenly bodies
that hang over our heads wherever we go, and " in their
untroubled element shall shine when we are laid in dust,
and all our cares forgotten," affect Uis in the same way.
Thus Satan's address to the Sun has an epic, not a dra-
matic interest; for though the second person in the
dialogue makes no answer and feels no concern, yet the eye *
of that vast luminary is upon him, like the eye of Heaven,
and seems conscious of what he says, like an universal
- presence. Dramatic poetry and epic in their perfection,
indeed, approxipiate to and strengthen one another. Dra- ,
matic poetry borrows aid from the dignity of persons and ,
things, as the heroic does from human passion ; but in theory /
t they are distinct. When Eichardll. calls for the looking- ,
glass to contemplate his faded majesty in it, and bursts
into that affecting exclamation : " O that I were a

70 On ShaJcs^eare and Milton.

mockery-king of snow, standing before the sun of Bolingr

broke !" we have here the utmost force of human passion^

combined with the ideas of regal splendour and iaMeOr

power. When Milton says of Satan —

" His form had not yet lost

All her original brightness, nor appeared
Less than archangel ruin*d, and th* excess
Of glory obscur'd " —

the mixture of beauty, of grandeur, and pathos, from the
sense of irreparable loss, of never-ending, unavaiHng
regret, is perfect.
^ The great fault of a modem school of poetry* is, that it '
is an experiment to reduce poetry to a mere effusion of
natural sensibility ; or, what is worse, to divest it both of
imaginary splendour and human passion, to surround the
meanest objects with the morbid feelings and devouring i
egotism of the writers^ own minds. Milton and Shakspearp
did not so understand poetry. They gave a more liberal
interpretation both to nature and art. They did not do
all they could to get rid of the vone and the other, to fill up
the dreary void with the Moods of their own Minds.
They owe their power over the human mind to their having
had a deeper sense than others of what was grand in the ob-
jects of nature, or affecting in the events of human life.
But to the men I speak of there is nothing interesting,
nothing heroical, but themselves. To them the fall of gods
or of great men is the same. They do not enter into the
feeling. They cannot understand the terms. They are even
debarred from the last poor, paltry consolation of an un-
manly triumph over fallen greatness ; for their minds reject,
with a convulsive effort and intolerable loathing, the very
idea that there ever was, or was thought to be, anything
superior to themselves. All that has ever excited the atten-
tion or admiration of the world, they look upo]^with the
most perfect indifference ; and they are surprised to find

* The school of Wordsworth and the Lake poets. — ^Ed. The
writer had also, perhaps, an eye to Crabbe.

On Shdkspeare and Milton. 71

that the world repays their indifference with scorn. " With
what measure they mete, it has been meted to them
again."

Shakspeare's imagination is of the same plastic kind as
his conception of character or passion. " It glances from
heaven to earth, from earth to heaven." Its movement is
rapid and devions. It unites the most opposite extremes;
or, as Puck says, in boasting of his own feats, *' puts a
girdle round about the earth in forty minutes." He seems
always hurrying from his subject, even while describing it;
but ^e stroke, like the lightning's, is sure as it is sudden.
He takes the widest possible range, but from that very
range he has his choice of the greatest variety and apti-
tude of materials. He brings together images the most
alike, but placed at the greatest distancis from each other ;
that is, found in circumstances of the greatest dissimi-
litude. From the remoteness of his combinations, and
the celerity with which they are eflEected, they coalesce the
more indissolubly together. The more the thoughts are
strangers to each other, and the longer they have been kept
asunder, tlie more intimate does their union seem to be-
come. Their felicity is equal to their force. Their like-
ness is maie more dazzling by their novelty. They startle,
and take the fancy prisoner in the same instant. I will
mention one or two which are very striking, and not much
known, out of Troilus and Cressida. .^eas says to
Agamemnon :

" I ask that I might waken reverence,
And bid the cheek be ready -with a blush
Modest as morning, when she coldly eyes
The youthM Phoebus."

Ulysses urging Achilles to shew himself in the field, says :

" No man is the lord of any thing ....
Till he communicate his parts to others :
Nor doth he of himself know them for aught,
Till he behold them formed in the applause

! \

I

I

/

72 On Shakspeare and Milton.

Where they're extended ! who, like an arch, reverbeiatet *
The voice again ; or, like a gate of steel,
Fronting the sun, receives and renders back
His figure and his heat."

Fatroclus gives the indolent warrior the same advice :

" Sweet, rouse yourself; and the weak wanton Cupid
Shall from your neck unloose his amorous fold,
And, like a dew-drop from the lion's mane,
Be shook to air."

Shakspeare's language and versification are like the rest of
him. He has a magic power over words; the7 come
winged at his bidding, and seem to know their places.
They are struck out at a heat on the spur of the occasion,
and have all the truth and vividness which arise from an
actual impression of the objects. His epithets and single
phrases are like sparkles, thrown off from an imagination
fired by the whirling rapidity of its own motion. His
language is hieroglyphical. It translates thouglits into
visible images. It abounds in sudden transitions and el-
liptical expressions. This is the source of his mixed
metaphors, which are only abbreviated forms of speech.
These, however, give no pain from long custom. They
have, in fact, become idioms in the language. They are
the building, and not the scaffolding to thought. We take
the meaning and effect of a well-known passage entire,
and no more §top to scan and spell out the particular
words and phrases than the syllables of which they are
composed. In trying to recollect any other author, one
sometimes stumbles, in case of failure, on a word as good.
In Shakspeare, any other word but the true one is sure to
be wrong. If anybody, for instance, could not recollect
the words of the following description,

" Light thickens, and the crow

Makes wing to the rooky wood,"

he would be greatly at a loss to substitute others for them
equally expressive of the feeling. These remarks, however,

Oil Skakspeare and Milton. 73

are strictly applicable only to the impassioned parts of
Shakspeare's langnage, wluch flowed from the warmth and
originality of his imagination, and were his own. The
language used for prose conversation and ordinary business
is sometimes technical, and involved in the affectation of
the time. Compare, for example, Othello's Apology to the
Senate, relating " his whole coarse of love," with some of
the preceding parts relating to his appointment and the
offtcial dispatches from Cyprus. In this respect, *'the
business of the state does him offence." His versification
is no less powerful, sweet, and varied. It has every occa-
sional excellence, of sullen intricacy crabbed and peis
plexed, or of the smoothest and loftiest expansion — from
the ease and familiarity of measured conversation to the

lyrical sounds

" Of ditties highly penned.

Sung by a fair queen in a summer's bower,
With ravishing division to her lute."

It is the only blank verse in the language except Milton's
that for itseK is readable. It is not stately and uniformly
swelling like his, but varied and broken by the inequalities
of the ground it has to pass over in its uncertain course :

" And so by many winding nooks it strays,
With "willing sport to the wild ocean."

It remains to speak of the faults of Shakspeare. They
Are not so many or so great as they have been represented;
what there are, are chiefly owing to the following causes :
The universality of his genius was, perhaps, a disad-
vantage to his single works, the variety of his resources,
tsometimes diverting him from applying them to the most
effectual purposes. He might be said to combine the
powers of ^schylus and Aristophanes, of Dante and
Eabelais, in his own mind. If he had been only half what
he was, he would perhaps have appeared greater. The
natural ease and indifference of his temper made him
sometimes less scrupulous than he might have been. He

74 On Shakspeare and Milton.

is relaxed and careless in critical places ; he is in earnest
througliout only in Timon, Macbeth, and Lear. Again^
he had no models of acknowledged excellence constantly
in view to stimulate his efforts, and, by all that appears, no ,
' love of fjEune. He wrote for the '^ great ynlgar and the
small *' in his time, not for posterity. If Qneen Elizabeth
and the maids of honbnr laughed heartily at his worst
jokes, and the catcalls in the gallery were silent at hi&
best passages, he went home satisfied, and slept the next
night welL He did not trouble himself about Voltaire's
criticisms. He was willing to take advantage of the
ignorance of the age in many things, and if his plays
pleased others, not to quarrel with them himself. His
very fiEU^ility of production would make him set less value
on his own excellences, and not care to distinguish nicely
between what he did well or iU. His blunders in chrono-
logy and geography do not amount to above half a dozen,
and they are offences against chronology and geography,*
not against poetry. As to the unities, he was right in |
/ setting them at defiance. He was fonder of puns than \
became so great a man. His barbarisms were those of his ^
age. His genius was his own. He had no objection to
float down with the stream of common taste and opinion :
he rose above it by his own buoyancy, and an impulse
which he could not keep under, in spite of himself or
others, and *' his delights did show most dolphin-like."

He had an equal genius for comedy and tragedy ; and ]
his tragedies are better than his comedies, because tragedy j
is better than comedy. His female characters, which have
been found fault with as insipid, are the finest in the world.
Lastly, Sliakspeare was the least of a coxcomb of any one
that ever lived, and much of a gentleman.

Shakspeare discovers in his writings little religious
enthusiasm, and an indifference to personal reputation ;

• But dome of these supposed blunders have been shown, of late
years, to be no blunders at all. — Ed.

On Shahspeare and MUton. 75

he had none of the bigotry of his age ; and his political
prejudices were not very strong. Li these respects, as
well as in every other, he formed a direct contrast to
Milton. Milton's works are a perpetual invocation to the
Muses, a hymn to Fame. He had his thoughts constantly
fixed on the contempla^n of the Hebrew theocracy, and
of a perfect commonwealth ; and he seized the pen with a
hand just warm from the touch of the ark of fSoith. His
religious zeal infused its character into his imagination ; ,
so that he devotes himself with the same sense of duty to
the cultivation of his genius,^ as he did to the exercise
of virtue or the good of his country. The spirit of tho
poet, the patriot, and the prophet vied with each other in
his breasi His mind appears to have held equal com-
munion with the inspired writers, and with the bards and
sages of ancient Greece and Eome :

" Blind Thamyris, and blind Moconides,
And Tiresias, and Phineus, prophets old."

He had a high standard with which he was always com-
paring himself, nothing short of which could satisfy his
iealous ambition. He thought of nobler forms and nobler
things than those he found about him. He lived apart in
the solitude of his own thoughts, carefully excluding from
his mind whatever might distract its purposes, or alloy
its purity, or damp its zeaL *' With darkness and with
dangers compassed round," he had the mighty models ot
antiquity always present to his thoughts, and determined
to raise a monument of equal height and glory, " piling
up every stone of lustre from the brook," for the delights
and wonder of posterity. He had girded himself up, and,
as it were, sanctified his genius to this service from his
youth. " For after," he says, " I had from my first years,
by the ceaseless diligence and care of my father, been
exercised to the tongues, and some sciences as my age could
8u£Eer, by sundry masters and teachers, it was found that

76 On Shakapeare and Milton.

whether aught was imposed upon me by them, or betaken
to of my own choice, the style, by certain yital signs it
had, was likely to liye ; but much latelier, in the private
academies of Italy, perceiving that some trifles which I
had in memory, composed at under twenty or thereabout,
met with acceptance above what was looked for, I began
thus far to assent both to them and divers of my friends
here at home, and not less to an inward prompting which
now grew daily upon me, that by labour and intense study
(which I take to be my portion in this life), joined with
the strong propensity of nature, I might perhaps leave
something so written to after-times as they should not
willingly let it die. The accomplishment of these inten-
tions, which have lived within me ever since I could con-
<5eive myself any thing worth to my country, lies not but
in a power above man's to promise; but that none hath by
more studious ways endeavoured, and with more unwearied
spirit that none shall, that I dare almost aver of myself,
as far as life and free leisure will extend. Neither do I
think it shame to covenant with any knowing reader, that
for some few years yet, I may go on trust with him
toward the payment of what I am now indebted, as being
a work not to be raised from the heat of youth or the
vapours of wine : like that which flows at waste from the
pen of some vulgar amourist, or the trencher fury of a
rhyming parasite, nor to be obtained by the invocation of
Dame Memory and her Siren daughters, but by devout
prayer to that eternal Spirit who can enrich with all utter-
ance and knowledge, and sends out His Seraphim with the
hallowed fire of His altar, to touch and purify the lips of
whom He pleases : to this must be added industrious and
select reading, steady observation, and insight into all seemly
and generous arts and affitirs. Although it nothing content
me to have disclosed thus much beforehand ; but that I
trust hereby to make it manifest with what small willing-
ness I endure to interrupt* the pursuit of no less hopes

On Shakspeare and Milton, TT

than these, and leave a calm and pleasing solitariness, fed
with cheerful and confident thoughts, to embark in a
troubled sea of noises and hoarse disputes, from behold-
ing the bright countenance of truth in the quiet and still
air of delightfcd studies."
So that of Spenser ;

" The noble heart that harbours virtuous thought,
And is with child of glorious great intent,
Can never rest until it forth have brought
The eternal brood of glory excellent."

Milton, therefore, did not write from casual impulse,
but after a severe examination of his own strength, and
with a resolution to leave nothing undone which it was in
his power to do. He always labours, and almost always
succeeds. He strives hard to say the finest things in the
world, and he does say them. He adorns and dignifies
his subject to the utmost: he surrounds it with every
possible association of beauty or grandeur, whether moral,
intellectual, or physical. He refines on his descriptions
of beauty, loading sweets on sweets, till the sense aches
at them, and raises his images of terror to a gigantio
elevation, that ''makes Ossa like a wart." In Milton,
there is always an appearance of effort : in Shakspeare,
jscarcely any.

Milton has borrowed more than any other writer, and
exhausted every source of imitation, sacred or profane;
yet he is perfectly distinct from every other writer. H^
is a writer of centos, and yet in originality scarcely inferior
to Homer. The power of his mind is stamped on every
line. The fervour of his imagination melts down and
renders malleable, as in a furnace, the most contradictory
materials. In reading his works, we feel ourselves under
the influence of a mighty intellect that, the nearer it ap-
proaches to others, becomes more distinct from them. The*
quantity of art in him shows the strength of his genius :
the weight of his intellectual obligations would have

/

78 On Shakspeare and MtUon.

oppressed any other writer. Milton's learning has the

effect of intuition. He describes objects, of which he

could only have read in books, with the vividness of actual

observation. His imagination has the force of nature. He

mak^s words tell as pictures :

^^ Him followeth Bimmon, whose delightful seat
Was fair Damascus, on the fertile banks
Of Abbana and Pharphar, lucid streams."

The word lucid here gives to the idea all the sparkling

effect of the most perfect landscape.

And again :

" As when a vulture on Imaus bred,
"Whose snowy ridge the roving Tartar bounds.
Dislodging from a region scarce of prey,
To gorge the flesh of lambs and yeanling kids
On hills where flocks are fed, flies towards the springs
Of Ganges or Hydaspes, Indian streams ;
But in his way lights on the barren plains
Of Sericana, where Chineses drive
With sails and wind their cany waggons light.*'

If Milton had taken a journey for the express purpose, ho

could not have described this scenery and mode of life

better. Such passages are like demonstrations of natural

history. Instances might be multiplied without end.

We might be tempted to suppose that the vividness, with

which he describes visible objects, was owing to their

having acquired an unusual degree of strength in his mind

:after the privation of his sight ; but we find the same

palpableness and truth in the descriptions which occur in

his early poems. In Lycidas, he speaks of " the great

vision of the guarded mount," with that preternatural \

weight of impression with which it would present itself

suddenly to ''the pilot of some small night-foundered

skiff:" and the lines in the Penseroso, describing "the

wandering moon :"

" Biding near her highest noon, l

Like one that hath been led astray
Through the heaven's wide pathless way " :

V

^

On ShaJcspeare and Milton. 79

arc as if Iio bad gazed himself blind in looking at ber*
Tbere is also tbe same deptb of impression in bis descrip-
tions of tbe objects of all tbe different senses, wbetber
colours, or sounds, or smells — tbe same absorption of bis
mind in wbatever engaged bis attention at tbe time. It
bas been indeed objected to Milton by a common perver-
sity of criticism, tbat bis ideas were musical ratber tban
picturesque, as if, because tbey were in tbe bigbest degree
musical, tbey must be (to keep tbe sage critical balance
even, and to allow no one man to possess two qualities at
tbe same time) proportionably deficient in otber respects.
But Milton's poetry is not cast in any such narrow, common-
place mould : it is not so barren of resources : bis worsbip
of tbe Muse was not so simple or confined. A sound arises
" liko a steam of ricb distilled perfumes ;" we bear tbe
poaling organ ; but tbe incense on tbe altars is also tbere,
and tbe statues of tbe gods are ranged around ! Tbe ear
indeed predominates over tbe eye, because it is more
immediately affected, and because tbe language of music
blends mor; immediately with, and forms Vmore natrmJ
accompaniment to, tbe variable and indefinite associations
of ideas conveyed by words. But wbere tbe associations
of tbe imagination are not tbe principal tbing, tbe indi-
vidual object is given by Milton witb equal force and
beauty. Tbe strongest and best proof of tbis, as a cbarac-
teristic power of bis mind, is tbat tbe persons of Adam
and Eve, of ^atan, &c., are always accompanied, in our
imagination, witb tbe grandeur of tbe naked figure ; tbey
convey to us tbe ideas of sculpture. As an instance, take
tbe following :

" He soon

Saw within ken a glorious Angel stand,

The same whom John saw also in the sun :

His back was turned, but not his brightness hid ;

Of beaming sunny rays a golden tiar

Circled his head, nor less his locks behind

Illustrious on his shoulders fledge with wings

80 On ShaJcspeare and Milton,

Lay waving round ; on some great charge employ'd
He seem'd, or fix'd in cogitation deep.
Glad was the Spirit Impure, as now in hope
To find who might direct his wand'ring flight
To Paradise, the happy seat of man,
His journey's end, and our beginning woe.
But first he casts to change his proper shape,
Which else might work him danger or delay :
And now a stripling cherub he appears,
Not of the prime, yet such as in his face
Youth smiled celestial, and to every limb
Suitable grace diffused, so well he feign'd :
Under a coronet his flowing hair
In curls on either cheek play'd ; wings he wore
Of many a coloured plume sprinkled with gold,
His habit fit for speed succinct, and held
Before his decent steps a silver wand.''

The figures introduced here have all the elegance and
precision of a Greek statue ; glossy and impurpled, tinged
with golden light, and musical as the strings of Memnon*s
harp!

Again, nothing can be more magnificent than the portrait

of Beelzebub :

** With Atlantean shoulders fit to bear
The weight of mightiest monarchies :"

Or the comparison of Satan, as he ^' lay floating many a
rood," to " that sea beast,"

" Leviathan, which God of all his works
Created hugest that swim the ocean-stream !"

What a force of imagination is there in this last expression t
What an idea it conveys of the size of that hugest of
created beings, as if it shrunk up the ocean to a stream,
and took up the sea in its nostrils as a very little thing !
Force of style is one of Milton's greatest excellences*
Hence, perhaps, he stimulates us more in the reading, and
less afterwards. The way to defend Milton against all
impugners is to take down the book and read it.

On ShaJcspeare and Milton. 81

Milton's blank verse is the only blank verse in the
language (except Shakspeare's) that deserves the name of
verse. Dr. Johnson, who had modelled his ideas of versi-
fication on the regular sing-song of Pope, condemns the
'^ Paradise Lost " as harsh and unequal. I shall not pretend
to say that this is not sometimes the case ; for where a
degree of excellence beyond the mechanical rules of art is
^ attempted, the poet must sometimes fail. But I imagine
that there are more perfect examples in Milton of musical
expression, or of an adaptation of the sound and move-
ment of the verse to the meaning of the passage, than in
all our other writers, whether of rhyme or blank verpe,
put together (with the exception already mentioned).
Spenser is the most harmonious of our stanza writers, as
Dryden is the most sounding and varied of our rhymists.
But in neither is there anything like the same ear for
music, the same power of approximating the varieties of
poetical to those of musical rhythm, as there is in our
great epic poet. The sound of his lines is moulded into
the expression of the sentiment, almost of the very image.
They rise or fall, pause or hurry rapidly on, with exquisite
art, but without the' least trick or affectation, as the occa*
sion seems to require.

The following are some of the finest instances :

" Hia hand was known

In Heaven by niany a tower'd structure high ; —
Nor was his name unheard or unador'd
' In ancient Greece : and in the AusoniaH land
Men called him Mulciber : and how he fell
From Heaven, they fabled, thrown by angry Jove
Sheer o'er the chrystal battlements ; from morn
To noon he fell, from noon to dewy eve,
A summer's day ; and with the setting sun
Dropt from the zenith like a falling star
On Lemnos, the iSgean isle : thus they relate,
Erring."

82 On Shahspeare and MiUon.

<(

But chief the Bpaoions hall

Thick swann'd, both on the ground and in the air,

Brush'd with the hiss of rustling wings. As bees

In spring time, when the sun with Taurus rides,

Pour forth their populous youth about the hiye

In clusters ; they among fresh dews and floVrs

Fly to and fro : or on the smoothed plank,

The suburb of their straw-built citadel,

New rubb'd with balm, expatiate and confer

Their state affairs. So thick the airy crowd

Swarm*d and were straiten'd ; till the signal ^i'Jif

Behold a wonder ! They but now who seem'd

In bigness to surpass earth's giant sons,

Now less than smallest dwarfs, in narrow room

Throng numberless, like that Pygmean race

Beyond the Indian mount, or fairy elves.

Whose midnight revels by a forest side

Or fountain, some belated peasant sees.

Or dreams he sees, while over-head the moon

Sitk arbitress, and nearer to the earth

Whirls her pale course : they on their mirth and dance

Intent, with jocund music charm his ear ;

At 'once with joy and fear his heart rebounds."

I can only give another instance, though I have some

difficulty in^ieaving off :

■»

" Bound he surveys (and well might, where he stood.
So high above the circling canopy
Of night's extended shade) &om th' eastern point
Of Libra to the fleecy star that bears
Andromeda far off Atlantic seas
Beyond the horizon : then from pole to pole
He views in breadth, and without longer pause
Down right into the world's first region throws
His flight precipitant, and winds with ease
Through the pure marble air his oblique way
Amongst innumerable stars that shone :
Stars distant, but nigh hand seem'd other worlds ;
Or other worlds they seem'd or happy isles,'' &c.

The verse, in this exqui^itely modnlated passage, floats
up and down as if it had itself wings. Milton has himflelf
giyen us the theory of his yersification :

On ShaJcspeare and Milton, 83

'^ Such as the meeting soul may pierce
In notes with many a winding bout
Of linked sweetness long drawn out."

Dr. Johnson and Pope would have converted his vatdt-
ing Pegasus into a rocking-horse. Bead any bther blank
verse but Milton's, — Thomson's, Young's, Cowper's,
Wordsworth's, — and it will be found, from the want of the
same insight into '^ the hidden soul of harmony,'* to be
mere lumbering prose.

To proceed to a consideration of the merits of " Paradise
Lost," in the most essentisd point of view, I mean as to the
poetry of character and passion. I shall say nothing of
the fable, or of other technical objections or excellences ;
but I shall try to explain at once the foundation of the
interest belonging to the poem. I am ready to give up
the dialogues in Heaven where, as Pope justly observes,
" God the Father turns a school divine ;" nor do I consider
the battle of the angels as the climax of sublimity, or the
most successful effort of Milton's pen. In a word, the
interest of the poem arises from the daring ambition and
fierce passions of Satan, and from the account of the
paradisaical happiness, and the loss of it by our first
parents. Three-fourths of the work are taken up with
these characters, and nearly all that relates to them is
unmixed sublimity and beauty. The two first books alone
are like two massy pillars of solid gold.

Satan is the most heroic subject that ever was chosen
for a poem ; and the execution is as perfect as the design
is lofty. He was the first of created beings who, for
endeavouring to be equal with ^e highest, and to divide
the empire of heaven with the Almighty, was hurled down
to hell. His aim was no less than the throne of the
universe; his means, myri^ids of angelic armies bright,
the third part of the heavens» whom he lured after him
with his countenance, and who durst defy the Omnipotent
in arms. His ambition was the greatest, and his punish-

84 On ShaJcspeare and Milton.

ment was the greatest ; but not so his despair : for his
fortitude was as great as his sufferings. His strength of
mind was matchless as his strength of body ; the vastness
of his designs did not surpass the £rm, inflexible determi-
nation with which he submitted to his irreversible doom
and final loss of all good. Hih power of action and of
suffering was equal. He was the greatest power that was
ever overthrown, with the strongest will left to resist or
to endure. He was baffled, not confounded. He stood

like a tower ; or

" As when heaven's fire

Hath scathed the forest oaks or mountain pines."

•

He was still surrounded with hosts of rebel angels, armed
warriors, who own him as their sovereign leader, and with
whose fate he sympathises as he views them round, far as
the eye can reach ; though he keeps aloof from them in his
own mind, and holds supreme counsel only with his own
breast. An outcast from Heaven, hell trembles beneath
his feet, Sin and Death are at his heels, and mankind are
his easy prey :

" All is not lost ; th* nnoonqnerable will,
And study of revenge, immortal hate.
And courage never to submit or yields
And what else is not to be overcome,"

are stiU his. The sense of his punishment seems lost in
the magnitude of it ; the fierceness of tormenting flames is
qualified and made innoxious by the greater fierceness of
his pride ; the loss of infinite happiness to himself is com-
, pensated in thought by the power of inflicting^ infinite
misery on others. Yet Satan is not the principle of
malignity, or of the abstract love of evil, but of tho
abstract love of power, of pride, of self-will personified^
to which last principle all other good and evil, and even
his own, are subordinate. From this principle he never
once flinches. His love of power and contempt for
suffering are never once relaxed from the highest pitch

On Shakspeare and Milton. 85

of intensity. His thoughts burn like a hell within him ; k
l)ut the power of thought holds dominion in his mind oyer ^
every other consideration. The consciousness of a deter-
mined purpose, of '* that intellectual being, those thoughts
that wander through eternity, though accompanied with
endless pain, he prefers to nonentity, to '* being swallowed
up and lost in the wide womb of uncreated night." He
expresses the sum and substance of all ambition in one
line: "iFallen cherub, to be weak is miserable, doing or
suffering !" After such a conflict as his and such a defeat,
to retreat in order, to rally, to make terms, to exist at all,
is something ; but he does niore than this : he founds a
new empire in hell, and from it conquers this new world,
whither he bends his undaunted flight, forcing his way'
through nether and surrounding fires. The poet has not
in all this given us a mere shadowy outline ; the strength
is equal to the magnitude of the conception. The Achilles
of Homer is not more distinct ; the Titans were not moro
vast; Prometheus chained to his rock was not a more ter-
rific example of suffering and of crime. Wherever the
figure of Satan is introduced, whether he walks or flies,
^ rising alofb incumbent on the dusky air," it is illustrated
with the most striking c^nd appropriate images : so that we
see it always before us, gigantic, irregular, portentous, un-
easy, and disturbed : but dazzling in its faded splendoui*,
the clouded ruins of a god. The deformity of Satan is only
in the depravity of his will ; he has no bodily deformity
to excite our loathing or disgust. The horns and tail are
not there,' poor emblems of the unbending, unconquered
spirit, of the writhing agonies within. Milton was too
magnanimous and open an antagonist to support his argu-
ment by the by-tricks of a hump and cloven foot, to
bring into the fair field of controversy the good old catholic
prejudices of which Tasso and Dante have availed them-
selves, and which the mystic German critics would restore.
He relied on the justice of his cause^ and did not scruple

86 On Shahspeare and Milton.

to give the devil his due. Some persons may think thai
he has carried his liberality too far, and injured the cause-
he professed to espouse by making him the chief person in
his poem. Considering the nature of his subject, he would
be equally in danger of running into this fault, from his
fedth in religion and his love of rebellion ; and perhaps
each of these motives had its fall share in determining the
choice of his subject.

Not only the figure of Satan, but his speeches in council,,
his soliloquies, his address to Eve, his share in the war i&
heaven, or in the isSl of man, shew the same decided supe-
riority of character. To give only one instance, almost
the first speech he makes :

'^Is this the region, this the soil, the clime,
Said then the lost archangel, this the seat
That we must change for Heaven ; this mournful gloom
For that celestial light ? Be it so, since he
Who now is soy'rain can dispose and bid
What shall be right : farthest from him is best,
Whom reason hath equalled, force hath made supreme
Above his equals. EYirewell happy fields,
Where joy for ever dwells ; Hail horrors, hail
Infernal world, and thou profoundest Hell,
Beceive thy new possessor ; one who brings
A mind not to be changed by place or time.
The mind is its own place, and in itself '

Can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.
What matter where, if I be still the same,
And what I should be, all but less than he
Whom thunder hath made greater ? Here at least
We shall be free ; th* Almighty hath not built
Here for his envy, wiU not drive us hence :
Here we may reign secure, and in my choice
To reign is worth ambition, though in Hell ;
Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven/'

The whole of the speeches and debates in Pandemoniuia
are well worthy of the place and the occasion — ^with gods
for speakers, and angels and archangels for hearers.
There is a decided manly tone in the arguments and
fientiments, an eloquent dogmatism, as if each person

On Shdkspeare and MiUon* 87

spoke from thorough conviction ; an excellence which
Milton probably borrowed from his spirit of partisan*
ship or else his spirit of partisanship from the natural
firmness and yigonr of his mind. In this respect Milton
resembles Dante (the only modem writer with whom .
he has anything in common), and it is remarkable 1
that Dante, as well as Milton, was a political partisan. '
That approximation to the severity of impassioned prose ^
which has been made an objection to Milton's poetry, and
which is chiefly to be met with in these bitter invectives,
is one of its great excellences. The author might here
turn his philippics against Salmasius to good account.
The rout in heaven is like the fall of some mighty struc-
ture, nodding to its base " with hideous ruin and combus-
tion down." But, perhaps, of all the passages in " Paradise
Lost,'' the description of the employments of the angels
during the absence of Satan, some of whom ** retreated in
a silent valley, sing with notes angelical to many a harp
their own heroic deeds and hapless fall by doom of battle,''
is the most perfect example of mingled pathos and sub-
limity. What proves the truth of this noble picture in
every part, and that the frequent complaint of want of
interest in it is the fault of the reader, not of the poet, is
that when any interest of a practical kind takes a shape that
can be at all turned into this (and there is little doubt
that Milton had some such in his eye in writing it), each
party converts it to its own purposes, feels the absolute
identity of these abstracted and high speculations, and that,
in fSftct, a noted political writer of the present day has
exhausted nearly the whole account of Satan in the " Para-
dise Lost," by applying it to a character * whom he con-
sidered as after the devil (though I do not know whether
he would make even that exception), the greatest enemy of
the human race. This may serve to show that Milton's
Satan is not a very insipid personage.

* The First Napoleon.— Ed.

88 On Shakspeare and Milton.

Of Adam and Eve it has been said, that the ordinary
reader can feel little interest in them, because they have
none of the passions, pursuits, or even relations of human
life, except that of man and wife, the least interesting of
all others, if not to the parties concerned, at least to the
bystanders. The preference has on this account been
given to Homer, who, it is said, has left very yivid and
infinitely diversified pictures of all the passions and affec-
tions, public and private, incident to human nature — the
relations of son, of brother, parent, friend, citizen, and
many others. Longinus preferred the Iliad to the Odys-
sey, on account of the greater number of battles it con-
tains ; but I can neither agree to his criticism, nor assent
to the present objection. It is true,^ there is little action
in this part of Milton's poem ; but there is much repose
and more enjoyment. There are none of the every-day
occurrences, contentions, disputes, wars, fightings, feuds,
jealousies, trades, professions, liveries, and common handi-
crafts of life ; *' no kind of traffic ; letters are not known ;
no use of service, of riches, poverty, contract, succession,
bourne, bound of land, tilth, vineyard none ; no occupation,
no treason, felony, sword, pike, knife, gun, nor need of any
engine." So much the better; thank Heaven, all these
were yet to come. But still the die was cast, and in them
our doom was sealed. In them

" The generations were prepared ; the pangs.
The internal pangs, were ready, the dread strife
Of poor humanity's afflicted will,
Struggling in vain with ruthless destiny."

In their first false step we trace " all our future woe, with
loss of Eden." But there was a short and precious interval
between, like the first blush of morning before the day is
overcast with tempest, the dawn of the world, the birth of
nature from '* the unapparent deep," with its first dews and
freshness on its cheek, breathing odours. Theirs was the
first delicious taste of life, and on them depended all that

On Sliakspeare and Milton. 89

was to come of it. In them hung trembling ftll onr hopes
and fears. They were as yet alone in the world, in the , \
eye of nature, wondering at their new being, fall of enjoy- ;
m^it and enraptured with one another, with the voice of
their Maker walking in the garden, and ministering angels
attendant on their steps, winged messengers from heaven
like rosy clouds descending in their sight. Nature played
around them her virgin fancies wild, and spread for them
a repast where no crude surfeit reigned. Was there no-
thing in this scene, which God and nature alone witnessed,
to interest a modem critic? What need was there of
action, where the heart was full of bliss and innocence
without it? They had nothing to do but feel their own
happiness, and " know to know no more." " They toiled
not, neither did they spin ; yet Solomon in all his glory was
not arrayed like one of these." All things seem to acquire
fresh sweetness, and to be clothed with fresh beauty in
their sight. They tasted as it were for themselves and us,
of all that there ever was pure in human bliss. '^ In them
the burthen of the mystery, the heavy and the weary
weight of all this unintelligible world, is lightened."
They stood awhile perfect ; but they afterwards fell, and
were driven ou|i of Paradise, tasting the first fruits of bit-
terness as they had done of bliss. But their pangs were
such as a pure spirit might feel at the sight, their tears

^^' such as angels weep.*' The pathos is of that mild con-
templative kind which arises from regret for the loss of
unspeakable happiness, and resignation to inevitable fate.
There is none of the fierceness of intemperate passion,
none of the agony of mind and turbulence of action, which
is the result of the habitual struggles of the will with cir-
cuniBtances, irritated by repeal disappoiBtment, and
constantly setting its desires most eagerly on that which

> there is an impossibility of attaining. This would have
destroyed the beauty of the whole picture. They had
received their unlooked-for happiness as a free gift from

90

On Shakspeare and Milton.

their Creator's hands, and they submitted to its loss, not
without sorrow, but without impious and stubborn r&»
pining:

" In either hand the hastening angel caught
Our ling'ring parents, and to th' eastern gate
Led them direct, and down the cliff as fast
To the subjected plain ; then disappeared.
They looking back, all th* eastern side beheld
Of Paradise, so late their happy seat,
WaVd oyer by that flaming brand, the gate
With dreadful faces throng'd, and fiery arms :
Some natural tears they dropt, but wip'd them soon r
The world was all before them, where to choose
Their place of rest, and Providence their guide.**

I I

<i. , .

> r

rrf

( 91 )

LECTUEE IV.

ON DBYDEN AND POPE.

Dbyden and Pope are the great masters of tbe artificial
style of poetry in our language, as the poets of whom I
have already treated, Chaucer, Spenser, Shakspeare, and
Milton, were of the natural ; and though this artificial style
is generally and very justly acknowledged to be inferior
to the other, yet those who stand at the head of that class
ought, perhaps, to rank higher than those who occupy an
inferior place in a superior class. They have a dear and
independent claim upon our gratitude, as haying produced
a kind and degree of excellence which existed equally no*
where else. What has been done well by some later writers
of the highest style of poetry, is included in and obscured
by a greater degree of power and genius in those before
them : what has been done best by poets of an entirely
distmct turn of miad stands by itself, and teUs for it»
whole amount. Young, for instance. Gray, or Akenside, \
only follow in the train of Milton and Shakspeare : Popo |
and Dryden walk by their side, though of an unequal |
stature, and are entitled to a first place in the lists of fame. '
This seems to be not only the reason of the thing, but the
common sense of mankind, who, without any regular pro-
cess of reflection, judge of the merit of a work, not more
by its inherent and absolute worth than by its originality
and capacity of gratifying a difierent faculty of the mind
. or a different class of readers ; for it should be recollected
that there may be readers (as well as poets) not of the
highest class, though very good sort of people, and not
altogether to bo despised.

92 On Bryden and Pope.

The question, whether Pope was a poet,* has hardly
yet been settled, and is hardly worth settling; for if
he was not a great poet, he must have been a great
prose-writer ; that is, he was a great writer of some sort.
He was a man of exquisite faculties, and of the most
refined taste ; and as he chose^ verse (the most obvious
distinction of poetry) as the vehicle to express his ideas,
ho has generally passed for a poet, and a good one. If
indeed by a great poet we mean one who gives the utmost
grandeur to our conceptions of nature, or the utmost force
to the passions of the heart, Pope was not in this sense a
great poet ; for the bent, the characteristic power of his
. mind, lay the clean contrary way : namely, in representing
1 things a« they appear to the indifferent observer, stripped
I of prejudice and passion, as in his Critical Essays ; or in
' representing them in the most contemptible and insignifi-
cant point of view, as in his Satires ; or in clothing the
little with mock-dignity, as in his poems of Fancy; or in
adorning the trivial incidents and familiar relations of life
with the utmost elegance of expression and all the flatter-
ing illusions of friendship or self-love, as in his Epistles.
He was not, then, distinguished as a poet of loffey enthu-
siasm, of strong imagination, with a passionate sense of the
beauties of nature, or a deep insight into the workings of
ihe heart ; but he was a wit and a critic, a man of sense,
of observation, and the world, with a keen relish for the
elegances of art, or of nature when embellished by art, a
quick tact for propriety of thought and manners as estab-
lished by the forms and customs of society, a refined sym-
pathy with the sentiments and habitudes of human life, as
he felt them within the little circle of his family and
friends. He was, in a word, the poet, not of nature, but of
^ ' art ; and the distinction between the two, as well as I can
'^ make it out, is this. The poet of nature is one who, from
ihe elements of beauty, of power, and of passion in his
* See the 8cgU^ Magazine for Feb. 1818.— Ed.

On Drydeii and Pope. 93

own breast, sympathises with whatever is beautiful, and
grand, and impassioned in nature, in its simple majesty, \
in its immediate appeal to the senses, to the thoughte and
hearts of all men ; so that the poet of nature, by the truth,
and depth, and harmony of his mind, may be said to hold
communion with the very soul of nature ; to be identified
with, and to foreknow, and to record the feelings of all men
at aU times and places, as they are liable to the same im-
pressions, and to exert the same power over the minds of
his readers that nature does. He sees things in their
eternal beauty, for he sees them as they are ; he feels them
in their universal interest, for> he feels them as they affect
the first principles of his and our common nature. Such
was Homer, such was Shakspeare, whose works will last a&
long as nature, because they are a copy of the indestructible
forms and everlasting impulses of nature, welling out from
the bosom as from a perennial spring, or stamped upon the
senses by the hand of their Maker. The power of the
imagination in them is the representative power of all
nature. It has its centre in the human soul, and makes
the circuit of the imiverse.

Pope was not assuredly a poet of this class, or in the
first rank of it. He saw nature only dressed by art ; he
judged of beauty by fEishion ; he sought for truth in the
opinions of the world ; he judged of the feelings of others
by his own. The capacious soul of Shakspeare had an
intuitive and mighty sympathy with whatever could enter
into the heart of man in all possible circumstances : Pope
had an exact knowledge of all that he himself loved or
hated, wished or wanted. Milton has winged his daring
flight from heaven to earth, through Chaos and old Night.
Pope's Muse never wandered with safety but from his
library to his grotto, or from his grotto into his library
back again. His mind dwelt with greater pleasure on his
own garden than on the garden of Eden ; he could describe
the faultless whole-length mirror that reflected his own

f

\

/

\

r

\

94 On Dryden and Pope.

person better tlian the smooth surface of the lake that
reflects the face of heaven, a piece of cut glass or a pair
of paste buckles with more brilliance and effect than a
thousand dew-drops glittering in the son. He would be
more delighted with a patent lamp than with ^' the palo
reflex of Cynthia's brow," that fills the skies with its sofb
silent lustre, that trembles through the cottage window,
and cheers the watchful mariner on the lonely wave. In
short, he was the poet o f personali ty and of poli^^d life.
That which was nS^estto him, was the greatest : the
fashion of the day bore sway in his mind over the iihmut-
able laws of nature. He preferred the artificial to the
natural in external objects, because he had a stronger
fellow-feeling with the self-love of the maker or pro-
prietor of a gewgaw than admiration of that which was
interesting to all mankind. He preferred the artificial to
the natural in passion, because the involuntary and uncal«
culating impulses of the one hurried him away with a
force and yehemence with which he could not grapple ;
while he could trifle with the conventional and superficial
modifications of mere sentiment at will, laugh at or admire,
put them on or off like a masquerade dress, make much or
little of them, indulge them for a longer or a shorter time,
as he pleased ; and because, while they amused his fiemcy
and exercised his ingenuity, they never once disturbed his
vanity, his levity or indifference. His mind was the anti-
thesis of strength and grandeur ; its power was the power
of indifference. He had none of the enthusiasm of poetry;
he was in poetry what the sceptic is in religion.

It cannot be denied, that his chief excellence lay more
; in diminishing than in aggrandising objects : in checking,
. not in encouraging our enthusiasm : in sneering at the extra-
, vagances of fancy or passion, instead of giving a loose to
;them: in describing a row of pins and needles rather than
the embattled spears of Greeks and Trojans : in penning a
lampoon or a compliment, and in praising Martha Blount.

0» Dryden and Pope. 95

Shakspeare says ;

((

In her [fortune's] ray and brightness

The herd hath more annoyance by the breese

Than by the tiger : but when the splitting wind

Makes flexible the knees of knotted oaks,

And flies fled under shed, why then the thing of courage,

As roused with rage, with rage doth sympathise ;

And with an accent tuned in self-same key,

Retorts to chiding Fortune." *

There is none of this rough work in Pope. His Muse
Wa» on a peace-establishment, and grew somewhat effemi-
nate by long ease and indulgence. He lived in the smiles
of fortune, and basked in the favour of the great. In his
smooth and polished verse we meet with no prodigies of
nature, but with miracles of wit ; the thunders of his pen
are whispered flatteries : its forked lightnings, pointed
sarcasms ; for " the gnarled oak " he gives us " the soft
myrtle :" for rocks, and seas, and mountains, artificial
grass-plats, gravel-walks^ and tinkling rills: for earth-
quakes and tempests, the breaking of a flower-pot or the
fall of a china-jar : for the tug and war of the elements or
the deadly strffe of the passions we have

'' Calm contemplation and poetic ease."

Yet within this retired and narrow circle how much, and
that how exquisite, was contained ! What discrimination,
what wit, what delicacy, what fancy, what lurking spleen,
what elegance of thought, what pampered refinement of
sentiment! It is like looking at the world through a \
microscope, where everything assumes a new character ^
and a new consequence, where things are seen in their '
minutest circmnstances and slightest shades of difference ; <
where the little becomes gigantic, the deformed beantifal, j
and the beautiful deformed. The wrong end of the mag-
nifier is, to be sure, held to everything; but still the
exhibition is Jiighly curious, and wo know not whether ta

« u

Troilus and Cressida," iii. 1.— En..

96 On Bryden and Pope.

be most pleased or surprisecL Such, at least, is the best
account I am able to give of this extraordinary man, with-
out doing injustice to him or others. It is time to refer
to particular instances in his works. The Eape of the
Lock is the best or most ingenious of these. It is the
most exquisite specimen of filigree work ever invented.
It is admirable in proportion as it is made of nothing :

"More subtle web Araohne cannot spin,
Nor the fine nets, which oft we woven see
Of scorched dew, do not in th' air more lightly flee/*

It is made of gauze and silver spangles. The most
glittering appearance is given to everything, to paste,
pomatum, billets-doux, and patches. Airs, languid airs,
breathe around ; the atmosphere is perfumed with affecta*
tion. A toilette is described with the solemnity of an
altar raised to the Goddess of Vanity, and the history of a
silver bodkin is given with all the pomp of heraldry. No
pains are spared, no profusion of ornament, no splendour

j of poetic diction, to set off the meanest things. Tha
balance between the concealed irony and the assumed

. gravity is as nicely trimmed as the balance of power in

\ Europe. The little is made great, and the great little.

. You hardly know whether to laugh or weep. It is the
triumph of insignificance, the apotheosis of foppery and
folly. It is the perfection of the mock-heroic I I will
give only the two following passages in illustration of
these remarks. Can anything be more elegant and grace-
ful than the description of Belinda, in the beginning of
the second canto ?

"Not with more glories, in the ethereal plain,
The sun first rises o'er the purpled main,
Than, issuing forth, the rival of his beams
Launched on the bosom of the silver Thames.
Fair nymphs and well-drest youths around her slione.
But ev'ry eye was fix'd on her alone.
On her white breast a sparkling cross she wore,
Which Jews might kiss, and infidels adore.

On Dryden and Pope. 97

Her lively looks a sprightly mind disclose,

Quick as her eyes, and as unfix'd as those :

Favours to none, to all she snules extends ;

Oft she rejects, but never once offends.

Bright as the sun, her eyes the gazers strike ;

And, like the sun, they shine on all alike.

Yet gracefol ease, and sweetness void of pride,

Might hide her faults, if beUes had faults to hide : <

If to her share some female errors fall,

Look on her face, and youll forget 'em all.

This nymph, to the destruction of mankind.
Nourished two locks, which graceful hung behind
In equal curls, and weU conspired to deck
With shining ringlets the smooth iv'ry neck."

The following is the introduction to the account of
Belinda's assault upon the baron bold, who had dissevered
one of these locks *' from her fedr head for ever and for

ever"

"Now meet thy fate, incens'd Belinda cry'd,
And drew a deadly bodkin from her side.
(The same his ancient personage to deck.
Her great, great grandsire wore about his neck,
In three seal rings ; which after, melted down.
Formed a vast buckle for his widow's gown :
Her infant grandame's whistle next it grew.
The bells she jingled, and the whistle blew ;
Then in a bodkia grac'd her mother's hairs,
IfVhich long she wore, and now Belinda wears.)"

I do not know how far Pope was indebted for the
original idea, or the delightful execution of this poem, to
the Lutrin of Boileau.

The Eape of the Lock is a double-refined essence of
wit and fancy, as the Essay on Criticism is of wit and
sense. The quantity of thought and observation in this >
work, for so young a man as Pope was when he wrote it, j
is wonderful : unless we adopt the supposition, that most |
men of genius spend the rest of their lives in teaching
others what they themselves have learned under twenty.
The conciseness and felicity of the expression are equally J

H

98 On Dryden cmd Pope,

remarkable. Thus in reasoning on the variety of men's
opinion, he says ;

" *Ti8 with our judgments, aa our watches ; none
Go just alike, yet each belieyes his own."

Nothing can be more original said happy than the general
remarks and illustrations in the Essay : the critical rules
laid down are too much those of a school, and of a confined
one. There is one passage in the Essay on Criticism in
which the author speaks with that eloquent enthusiasm of
the £une of ancient writers, which those will always feel
who have themselves any hope or chance of immortality.
I have quoted the passage elsewhere, but I will repeat it

here:

'^ Still green with bays each ancient altar stands,

Above the reach of sacrilegious hands ;

Secure from flames, from envy's fiercer rage,
. ■• Destructive war, and all-involving age.

< HaU, bards triumphant, bom in happier days,

Inmiortal heirs of universal praise !

Whose honours with increase of ages grow,

As streams roU down, enlarging as they fiow."

These lines come with double force and beauty on the

reader, as they were dictated by the writer's despair of

ever attaining that lasting glory which he celebrates with

such disinterested enthusiasm in others, from the lateness

of the age in which he lived, and from his writing in a

tongue, not imderstood by other nations, and that grows

obsolete and unintelligible to ourselves at the end of every

second century. But he needed not have thus antedated

his own poetical doom — ^the loss and entire oblivion of

that which can never die. If he had known, he might

. have boasted that " his little bark " wafted down the stream

of time:

" With theirs should sail,

Pursue the triumph and partake the gale " —

if those who know how to ^et a due value on the blessing,

/

■K

On Dryden and Pope, - _ 99

were not the last to decide confidently on their own pre-
tensions to it.

There is a cant in the present day abont genius as
everything in poetry : there was a cant in the time of Pope
about sense, as performing all sorts of wonders. It was a
kind of watchword, the shibboleth of a critical party of
the day. As a proof of the exclusiye attention which it
occupied in their minds, it is remarkable that in the Essay
on Criticism (not a very long poem) there are no less than
half a score of successive couplets rhyming to the word
^eme. This appears almost incredible without giving the
instances, and no less so when they are given :

*' But of the two, less dangerous is the offence,

To tire our patience than mislead our sense." — lines 3, 4,
'^ In search of wit these lose their common sense,

And then turn critics in thfeir own defence." — I, 28, 29.
" Pride, where wit fails, steps in to our defence,

And fills up all the mighty void of sense." — I. 209, 10.
** Some by old words to fame have made pretence,

Ancients In phrase, mere modems in their sense." — I. 324, 5.
" 'Tis not enough no harshness gives offence ;

The sound must seem an echo to the sense." — Z. 364, 5.
"At every trifle scorn to take offence ;

That always shows great pride, or little sense." — I. 386, 7.
** Be silent always, when you doubt your sense.

And speak, though sure, with seeming diffidence." — I. 366, 7.
" Be niggards of advice on no pretence.

For the worst avarice is that of sense." — I. 578, 9.
" Strain out the last dull dropping of their sense.

And rhyme with all the rage of impotence." — I. 608, 9.
** Horace still charms with graceful negligence,

And without method talks us into sense.*' — I. 653, 4.

I have mentioned this the more for the sake of those
critics who are bigoted idolisers of our author, chiefly on
ihe score of his correctness. These persons seem to be
of opinion that "there is but one perfect writer, even
Pope." This is, however, a mistake : his excellence is by-
no means faultlessness. If he had no great faults, he is
fill! of little errors. His grammatical construction is

100 On Dryden and Pope,

often lame and imperfect. In the Abelard and Eloise, he

8a js:

*^ There died the best of passions, Love and Fame."

This is not a legitimate ellipsis. Fame is not a passion,
though love is : but his ear was evidently confused by the
meeting of the sounds " love and feone," as if they of them-
selves immediately implied "love, and love of fame."
Pope's rhymes are constantly defective, being rhymes to
the eye instead of the ear, and this to a greater degree
not only than in later, but than in preceding writers. The
praise of his versification must be confined to its uniform
smoothness and harmony. In the translation of the Iliad,
which has been considered as his masterpiece in style and
execution, he continually changes the tenses in the same
sentence for the purposes of the rhyme, which- shows either
a want of technical resources, or great inattention to punc*
tilious exactness. But to have done with this.

The epistle of Eloise to Abelard is the only exception I
can think of to the general spirit of the foregoing remarks ;
and I should be disingenuous not to acknowledge that it
is an exception. The foundation is in the letters them-
selves of Abelard and Eloise, which are quite as impressive,
but still in a different way. It is fine as a poem : it i&
finer as a piece of high- wrought eloquence. No woman
could be supposed to write a better love-letter in verse.
Besides the richness of the historical materials, the high
gusto of the original sentiments which Pope had to work
upon, there were perhaps circiunstances in his own situa-
tion which made him enter into the subject with even
more than a poet's feelifig. The tears shed are drop^
gushing from the heart: the words are burning sigha
breathed from the soul of love. Perhaps the poem to
which it bears the greatest similarity in our language, is
Dryden's Tancred and Sigismunda, taken from Boccaccio.
Pope's Eloise will bear this comparison ; and after such a
test, with Boccaccio for the original author, and Dryden

On Dryden and Pope, 101

for the translator, it need shrink from no other. There is
something exceedingly tender and beautiful in the sound
of the concluding lines :

" If ever chance two wandering lovers brings
To Paraclete's white walls and silver springs," &c.

The Essay on Man is not Pope's best work. It is a
theory which Bolingbroke is supposed to have given him,
and which he expanded into verse. But " he spins the
thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his argu-
ment." All that he says, " the very words, and to the
self-same tune," would prove just as well that whatever is,
is wrong, as that whatever is, is fight. The Dunciad has
splendid passages, but in general it is dull, heavy, and
mechanical. The sarcasm already quoted on Settle, the
Lord Mayor's poet (for at that time there was a city as
well as a court poet) —

" Now night descending, the proud scene is o'er,
But lives in Settle's numbers one day more '* —

is the finest inversion of immortality conceivabla It is
even better than his serious apostrophe to the great heirs
of glory, the triumphant bards of witiquity!

The finest burst of severe moral invective in all Pope,
is the prophetical conclusion of the epilogue to the
Satires :

" "Virtue may chuse the high or low degree,
'Tis just alike to virtue and to me ;
Dwell in a monk, or light upon a king,
She's stiU the same belov'd, contented thing.
Vice is undone if she forgets her birth,
And stoops from angels to the dregs of earth.
But 'tis the Fall degrades her to a whore :
Let Greatness own her, and she's mean no more.
Her birth, her beauty, crowds and courts confess,
Chaste matrons praise her, and grave bishops bless ;
In golden chains the willing world she draws.
And hers the gospel is, and hers the laws ;

i

102 On Dryden and Pope.

Hounts the tribunal, lifts her scarlet head.
And sees pale Yirtne carted in her stead.
Lo ! at the wheels of her triumphal car,
Old England's Genius, rough with many a scar.
Dragged in the dust 1 his arms hang idly round.
His flag inverted trains along the ground I
Our youth, aU livery'd o'er with foreign gold,
Before her dance ; behind her, crawl the old !
See thronging millions to the Paged run,
And offer country, parent, wife, or son !
Hear her black trumpet through the land proclaim.
That not to he (xtrrupied is the shame.'
In soldier, churchman, patriot, man in pow'r,
'Tis aVrice all, ambition is no more !
See all dur nobles begging to be slaves !
See all our fools aspiring to be knaves !
The wit of cheats, the courage of a whore,
, Are what ten thousand envy and adore :

All, all look up with reverential awe.
At crimes that 'scape or triumph o'er the law ;
While truth, worth, wisdom, daily they decry :
Nothing is sacred now but villainy.
Yet may this verse (if such a verse remain)
Show there was one who held it in disdain."

His Satires are not, in general, so good as his Epistles.
His enmity is effeminate and petulant &om a sense of
weakness, as his friendship was tender from a sense of
gratitude. I do not like, for instance, his character of
Chartres, or Hs characters of women. His delicacy often
borders upon sickliness ; his fastidiousness makes others^
fastidious. But his compliments are divine; they are
equal in value to a house or an estate. Take the following.
[n addressing Lord Mansfield, he speaks of the grave as a

scene:

" Where Murray, long enough his country's pride.
Shall be no more than Tully, or than Hyde."

To Bolingbroke he says :

" Why rail they then if but one wreath of mine,
Oh all-accomplish'd St. John, deck thy shrine?"

Again, he has bequeathed this praise to Lord Oombury :

«r

I. k

u " w'' i w " •-

• fc ^ I, fc

On Vryden and Pope, 103

^ Despise low thoughts, low gains :
Disdain whatever Gombnry disdaing ;
Be virtuous and be happy for your pains/'

One would think (thongh there is no knowing) that a

descendant of this nobleman, if there be such a person

liying, could hardly be guilty of a mean or paltry action.

The finest piece of personal satire in Pope (perhaps in

the world) is his character of Addison ; and this, it may be

observed, is of a mixed kind, made up of his respect for

the man, and a cutting sense of his failings. The other

finest one is that of Buckingham, and the best part of that

is the pleasurable :

^ Alas ! how changed from him,

That life of pleasure and that soul of whim :
Gallant and gay, in Cliveden's proud alcove,
\ The bower of wanton Shrewsbury and love !"

Among his happiest and most inimitable efiusions are
the Epistles to Arbuthnot and to Jervas the painter:
amiable patterns of the delightful unconcerned life, blend-
ing ease with dignity, which poets and painters then led.
Thus he says to Arbuthnot :

•* Why did I write ? What sin to me unknown
Dipp'd me in ink, my parents' or my own ?
As yet a child, nor yet a fool to fame,
I lisped in numbers, for the numbers came.
I left; no calling for this idle trade.
No duty broke, no father disobey'd :
The muse but serv'd to ease some friend, not wife ;
To help me through this long disease, my life ?
To second, Arbuthnot ! thy art and care.
And teach the being you preserv'd to bear.

But why then publish ? Granville the polite
And knowing Walsh would tell me I could write :
Well-natur d Grarth inflam'd with early praise :
And Congreve loVd, and Swift endur'd, my lays;
The courtly Talbot, Somers, Sheffield read ;
E'en mitred Rochester * would nod the head ;

♦ Bishop Atterbury. — ^Ed.

104 On Dryden and Pope.

And St. John's self (great Dryden's friend before)
With open arms receiv'd one poet more.
Happy my studies, when by these approv'd I
Happier their author, when by these beloved 1
From these the world will judge of men and books,
Not from the Bumets, Oldmixons, and Cooks."

I cannot help giving also the conclusion of the Epistle
to Jerras :

" Oh 1 lasting as those colours may they shine.
Free as thy stroke, yet faultless as thy line ;
New grp>ces yearly like thy works display,
Soft without weakness, without glaring gay ;
Led by some rule that guides, but not constrains ;
And finish'd more through happiness than pains.
The kjadred arts shall in their praise conspire.
One d'p the pencil, and one string the lyre.
Yet slpuld the Graces all thy figures place.
And 1 reathe an air divine on ev'ry face : \. *

Yet s^iould the Muses bid my numbers roll
^' StK^Dj^ as their charms, and gentle as their soul •

Wit D feuxis' Helen thy Bridgewater vie,
Anit I Dese be sung till GranviUe's Myra die :
AlaM ' how little from the grave we c^im !
Tho'i out preserv*st a fiwe, and I a name."

And shaJl we cut ourselves off from beauties like these
with a theory ? Shall we shut up our books, and seal up
our senses, to please the dull spite and inordinate vanity
of those " who have eyes, but they see not — ears, but they
hear not — and understandings, but they understand not,"
and go about asking our blind guides whether Pope was a
poet or not ? It will never do. Such persons, when you
point out to them a fine passage in Pope, turn it off to
fiomething of the same sort in some other writer. Thus.
they say that the line, " I lisp'd in numbers, for the num-
bers came," is pretty, but taken from that of Ovid — Et
quum conabar scnberey versus erat. They are safe in this
mode of criticism : there is no danger of anyone's tracing
their writings to the classics.

Pope's letters and prose writings neither take away from

On Dry den and Pope. 105

nor add to his poetical reputation. There is, occasionally,
a littleness of manner and an unnecessary degree of cau-
tion. He appears anxious to say a good thing in every
word, as well as every sentence. They, however, give a
very favourable idea of his moral character in all respects;
and his letters to Atterbury, in his disgrace and exile, do
equal honour to both. If I had to choose, there are one
or two persons — and but one or two — that I should like to
have been better than Pope !

Dryden was a better prose- writer, and a bolder and more
varied versifier than Pope. He was a more vigorous thinker,
a more correct and logical declaimer, and had more of
what may be called strength of mind than Pope ; but he
had not the same refinement and delicacy of feeling.
Dryden's eloquence and spirit were possessed in a higher
degree by others, and in nearly the same degree by Pope
himself; but that by which Pope was distinguished was an
essence which he alone possessed, and of incomparable
value on that sole account. Dryden's Epistles are excel-
lent, but inferior to Pope's, though they appear (particu-
larly the admirable one to Congreve) to have been the
model on which the latter formed his. His Satires arc
better than Pope's. His Absalom and Achitophel is supe-
rior, both in force of invective and discrimination of
character, to anything of Pope's in the same way. The
character of Achitophel is very fine, and breathes, if not
a sincere love for virtue, a strong spirit of indignation
against vice.

MacFlecknoe is the origin of the idea of the Dunciad;
but it is less elaborately constructed, less feeble, and less
heavy. The difference between Pope's satirical portraits and
Dryden's appears to be this in a good measure, that Dryden
seems to grapple with his antagonists, and to describe real
persons ; Pope seems to refine upon them in his own mind,
and to make them out just what he pleases, till they are
not real characters, but the mere drivelling effusions of his

106 On Vryden and Pope.

spleen and malice. Pope describes the thing, and then
goes on describing his own description, till he loses him-
self in Yerbal repetitions. Dryden recurs to the object
often, takes fresh sittings of nature, and gives us new
strokes of character as well as of his pencil. The Hind
and Panther is an allegory as well as a satire, and so fur
irtells less home ; the battery is not so point-blank. But
otherwise it has more f genius, vehemence, and strength of
description than any other of Dryden's works, not except-
ing the Absalom and Achitophel. It also contains the
finest examples of varied and sounding versification. I
will quote the following as an instance of what I mean.
He is complaining of the treatment which the Papists^
under James II., received from the Church of England :

*' Besides these jolly birds, -whose corpse impuro
Bepaid their commons with their salt manure.
Another farm he had behind his house.
Not overstocked, but barely for his use ;
Wherein his poor domestic poultry fed, ^

And from his pious hand " received their bread."
Our pampered pigeons, with malignant eyes, '

Beheld these inmates and their nurseries ;
Though hard their fare, at evening and at mom
(A cruse of water, and an ear of com).
Yet still they grudged that modicum, and thought
A sheaf in every single grain was brought.
Fain would they filch that little food away^,
While unrestrained those happy gluttons prey ;
And much they grieved to see so nigh their hall.
The bird that warned St. Peter of his fall ;
. ' . That he should raise his mitred crest on high,
And clap his wings, and call his &mily
To sacred rites ; and vex the ethereal powers
With midm'ght matins at uncivil hours ;
Nay more, his quiet neighbours should molest.
Just in the sweetness of their morning rest.
Beast of a bird ! supinely when he might
Lie snug and sleep, to rise before the light 1
What if his duU fore&thers us'd that cry.
Could he not let a bad example die ? , _..>_.

On Dryden and Pope. lOT

I , The world was fallen into an easier way :

This age knew better than to fast and pray.
Good sense in sacred worship would appear,
So to begin as they might end the year.
Such feats in former times had wrought the fiBills
Of crowing chanticleers in cloister'd walls.
Expell'd for this, and for their lands they fled ;
And sister Partlet with her hooded head
Was hooted hence, because she would not pray a-bed."

There is a magnanimity of abuse in some of these epithets^
a fearless choice of topics 9f invective, which may be- con-
sidered as the heroical in satire.

The Annus Mirdbilia is a tedious performance ; it is a
tissue of far-fetched, heavy, lumbering conceits, and in the
worst style of what has been denominated metaphysical |
poetry. His Odes in general are of the same stamp ; they '
are the hard-strained offspring of a meagre, meretricious
fancy. The famous Ode on St. Cecilia deserves its reputa-
tion ; for, as a piece of poetical mechanism to be set to
music, or recited in alternate strophe and antistrophe, with
classical allusions and flowing verse, nothing can be better.
It is equally fit to be said or sung ; it is not equally good
to read. It is lyrical without being epic or dramatic.
Por instance, the description of Bacchus —

" The jolly god in triumph comes,
Sound the trumpets, beat the drums ;
Flush'd with a purple grace,
He shows his honest face " —

does not answer, as it ought, to our idea of the god, re-
turning from the conquest of India, with satyrs and wild
beasts that he had tamed, following in his train : crowned
with vine leaves, and riding in a chariot drawn by leopards
— such as we have seen him painted by Titian or Bubens !
Lyrical poetry, of all others, bears the nearest resemblance
to planting : it deals in hieroglyphics and passing figures,,
which depend for e£fect, not on the working out, but on the
selection. It is the dance and pantomime of poetry. In

108 Oil Dryden and Pope.

variety and rapidity of movement, the Alexander's Feast
has all that can be required in this respect ; it only wants
loftiness and truth of character.

Dryden's plays are better than Pope could have written ;
for though he does not go out of himself by the force of
imagination, he goes out of himseKby the force of common-
places and rhetorical dialogue. On the other hand, they
are not so good as Shakspeare's ; but he has left the best
<;haracter of Shakspeare that has ever been written**

His alterations from Chaucer and Boccaccio show a
greater knowledge of the taste of his readers and power of
pleasing them than acquaintance with the genius of his
authors. He ekes out the lameness of the verse in the
former, and breaks the force of the passion in both. The
Tancred and Sigismunda is the only general exception in
which, I think, he has folly retained, if not improved
upon, the impassioned declamation of the original. The
Honoria has none of the bewildered, dreary, preternatural
effect of Boccaccio's story. Nor has the Flower and the
Leaf anything of the enchanting simplicity and concen-
trated feeling of Chaucer's romantic fiction. Dryden, how-

* " To begin then with Shakspeare : he was the man who of all
modem, and perhaps ancient poets, had the largest and most com-
prehensive soul. All the images of nature were still present to
him, and he drew them not laboriously, but luckily: when he
describes anything, you more than see it — you feel it too. Those
who accuse him to have wanted learning, give him the greater
commendation: he was naturally learned; he needed not the
spectacles of books to read nature ; he looked inwards and found
her there. I cannot say he is everywhere alike; were he so, I
should do him injury to compare him with the greatest of mankind.
He is many times flat, and insipid ; his comic wit degenerating
into clenches, his serious swelling into bombast. But he is always
great, when some great occasion is presented to him. Ko man can
say he ever had a fit subject for his wit, and did not then raise him-
self as high above the rest of poets.

Quantum Unta sclent inter vihuma. cupressi"

[Virg. Eel. i. 1. 26.]

On Dry den and Pope, 10&

ever, sometiines seemed to indulge himself as well as his
readers, as in keeping entire that noble line in Falamon's^
address to Venus :

'* Thon gladder of the mount of Githeeron T

His Tales' have been, upon the whole, the most popular
of his works ; and I should think that a translation of some
of the other serious tales in Boccaccio and Chaucer, as that
of Isabella, the Falcon, of Constance, the Prioress's Tale,,
and others, if executed with taste and spirit, could not fail
to succeed in the present day.

It should appear, in tracing the history of our literature^
that poetry had, at the period of which we are speaking,
in general declined by successive gradations from the
poetry of imagination, in the time of Elizabeth, to the
poetry of feuicy (to adopt a modem distinction) in the time
of Charles L ; and again from the poetry of feuicy to that
of wit, as in the reign of Charles II. and Queen Anne. It
degenerated into the poetry of mere commonplaces, both
in style and thought, in the succeeding reigns ; as in the
latter part of the last century it was transformed, by means
of the French Iteyolution,_mto the poetry of paradox.

Of Donne I know nothing but some beautiful verses to
his wife, dissuading her from accompanying him on his
travels abroad, and some quaint riddles in verse, which
the Sphinx could not unravel.

Waller still lives in the name of Sacharissa ; and his
lines on the death of Oliver Cromwell show that he was a '
man not without genius and strength of thought.

Marvel is a writer of nearly the same period, and worthy
of a better age. Some of his verses are harsh, as the words
of Mercury : others musical, as is Apollo's lute. Of the
latter kind are his boat-song, his description of a fawn,
and his lines to Lady Yere. His lines prefixed to Paradise
Lost are by no means the most favourable specimen of hip
powers.

110

On Dryden and Pope.

N

V

\y

«<

V

Butler's Hadibras is a poem of more wit than any other
in the language. The rhymes have as much genius in
them as the thoughts ; but there is no story in it, and but
little humour. { humour is the malcing otiiers act or talk
absurdly and unconsciously ; wit is the pointing out and
ridiculing that absurdity consciously, and with more or
less ill-nature. The fault of Butler's poem is not that it
has too muoh wit, but that it has not an equal quantity of
other things. I One would suppose that the starched man-
ners and sanctified grimace of the times in which he lived
would of themselves have been sufficiently rich in ludicrous
incidents and characters; but they seem rather to have
irritated his spleen than to have ^wn forth his powers
of picturesque imitation. Certainly, if we compare Hudi-
bras with Don Quixote in this respect, it seems rather a
meagre and unsatisfactory performance.

Bochester's poetry is the poetry of wit combined with
the love of pleasure, of thought with licentiousness. His
extravagant heedless levity has a sort of passionate en-
thusiasm in it ; his contempt for everything that others
respect almost amounts to sublimity. His poem upon
Nothing is itself no trifling work. His epigrams were the
bitterest, the least laboured, and the truest, that ever were
written.

Sir John Suckling was of the same mercurial stamp,
but with a greater fund of animal spirits : as witiy, but
less malicious. His Ballad on a Wedding is perfect in its
kind, and has a spirit of high enjoyment in it, of sportive
fancy, a liveliness of description and a truth of nature that
never were surpassed. It is superior to either Gay or
Prior; for with all their naivetS and terseness it has a
Shakspearean grace and luxuriance about it which they
could not have reached.

Denham and Cowley belong to the same period, but
were quite distinct from each other: the one was grave
and prosing, the other melancholy and fantasticaL There

On Dry den and Pope, 111

are a number of good lines and good thoughts in the
Cooper's Hill ; and in Cowley there is an inexhaustible
fund of sense and ingenuity, buried in inextricable con-
ceits, and entangled in the cobwebs of the schools. He
was a great man, not a great poet. But I shall say no
more on this subject. I never wish to meddle with names
that are sacred, unless when they stand in the way of things
that are more sacred.

Wither is a name now almost forgotten, and his works
seldom read; but his poetry is not unfrequently distin-
guished by a tender and pastoral turn of thought; and
there is one passage of exquisite feeling, describing the
consolations of poetry in the following terms :

" She doth tell me where to borrow
Comfort in the midst of sorrow ;
Makes the desolatest place *
To her presence be a grace ;
And the blackest discontents
Be her fairest ornaments.
In my former days of bliss
Her divine skill taught me this,
That from everything I saw,
I could some invention draw ;
And raise pleasure to her height,
Through the meanest object's sights
By the murmur of a spring,
Or the least bough's rusteling.
By a daisy whose leaves spread,
Shut when Titan goes to bed ;
Or a shady bush or tree,
She could more infuse in me,
Than all Nature's beauties can
In some other wiser man.
By her help I also now
Make this churlish place allow
Some things that may sweeten gladnev
In the very gall of sadness.

Written in the Marshalsea Prison.

II

112 On Vryden and Pope.

The dull loneness, the black shade,
I That these hanging vaults have made :

The strange music of the waves,
Beating on these hollow caves :
This black den which rocks emboss.
Overgrown with eldest moss :
The rude portals that give light
More to terror thah delight :
This my chamber of neglect,
Wall'd about with disrespect :
From all these and this dull air,
A fit object for despair,
She hath taught me by her might
To draw comfort and delight.

Therefore, thou best earthly bliss, |

I will cherish thee for this.
Poesie, thou sweefst content
That ere Heav'n to mortals lent :
Though they as a trifle leave thee,
Whose dull thoughts cannot conceive thee :
Though thou be to them a scorn,
That to nought but earth are bom : '

Let my life no longer be «^

Than I am in love with thee.
Though our wise ones call thee madneflBy
Let me never taste of sadness,
If I love not thy maddest fits.
Above all their greatest wits.
And though some too seeming holy,
Do account thy raptures folly,
Thou dost teach me to contemn
What makes knaves and fools of them.

I

( 113 )

LECTUEE V.

ON THOMSON AND OOWPEfi.

Thomson, the kind-liearted Thomson, was the most indolent
of mortals and of poets. But he was also one of the best both
of mortals and of poets. Dr. Johnson makes it his praise
that he wrote " no line which dying he would wish to blot."
Perhaps a better proof of his honest simplicity and in-
offensive goodness of disposition would be that he wrote
no line which any other person Hving would wish that he
should blot. Indeed he himself wished, on his death-bed,
formally to expunge his dedication of one of the Seasons
to that finished courtier and candid biographer of his own
life, Bubb Doddington. As critics, however, not as moral-
ists, we might say on the other hand, " Would he had
blotted a thousand T The same suavity of temper and
sanguine warmth of feeling which threw such a natural
grace and genial spirit of enthusiasm over his poetry, was
also the cause of its inherent vices and defects. He is
affected through carelessness, pompous from tmsuspect-
ing simplicity of character. He is frequently pedantio
and ostentatious in his style, because he had no conscious-
ness of these "vices in himself. He mounts upon stilts, not
out of vanity, but indolence. He seldom writes a good
line, but he makes up for it by a bad one. He takes ad-
vantage of all the most trite and mechanical commonplaces
of imagery and diction as a kindly relief to his Muse, and
as if he thought them quite as good, and likely to be quite
as acceptable to the reader, as his own poetry. He did not
think the difference worth putting himself to the trouble of

114 Cfn Tlwmsan and Couoper.

accomplisliing. He had too litUe art to conceal his art,
or did not even seem to know that there was any occasicm
for it. His art is as naked and undisguised as his nature ;
the one is as pure and genuine as the other is gross, gandj,
and meretricious. All that is admirable in the Seasons is
the emanation of a fine natural genius, and sincere love of
his subject, unforced, unstudied, that comes uncalled-for
and departs unbidden. But he takes no pains, uses no
self-correction ; or if he seems to labour, it is worse than
labour lost. His genius '' cannot be constrained by mas-
tery." The feeling of nature, of the changes of the sea-
sons, was in his mind ; and he could not help conveying
this feeling to the reader by the mere force of spontaneous
expression ; but if the expression did not come of itself, he
lefb the whole business to chance ; or,, willing to evade
instead of encountering the dif&culties of his subject, fills
up the intervals of true inspiration with the most vapid
and worthless materials, pieces out a beautiful half line
with a bombastic allusion, or overloads an exquisitely
natural sentiment or image with a cloud of painted,
pompous, cumbrous phrases, like the shower of roses in
which he represents the Spring, his own lovely, fresh, and
innocent Spring, as descending to the earth :

'' Come, gentle Spring ! ethereal Mildness ! come,
And from the bosom of yon dropping cloud,
While, music wakes around, veil'd in a shower
Of shadowing roses, on our plains descend."

Who, from such a flimsy, round-about, unmeaning com-
mencement as this, would expect the delightful, unexag-
gerated, home-felt descriptions of natural scenery, whidi
are scattered in such unconscious profusion through this
and the following cantos ? For instance, the very next
Dassage is crowded with a set of striking images :

" And see where surly Winter passes oft
Far to the north, and oaUs his ruffian blasts ;
His blasts obey,^nd quit the howling hill.
The shattered forest, and the ravag'd vale ;

On Tnomson ana Cotvper. 115

While softer gales succeed, at whose kind touch
Dissolving snows in livid torrents lost,
The mountains lift their green heads to the sky.
As yet the trembling year is unconfirmed,
And Winter oft at eve resumes the breeze.
Chills the pale mom, and bids his driving sleets
Deform the day delightless ; so that scarce
The bittern knows his time with bill ingulpht
To shake the sounding marsh, or &om the shore
The plovers when to scatter o'er the heath,
, And sing their wild notes to the list'ning waste."

Thomson is the best of our descriptive poets: for he
gives most of the poetry of natural description. Others
have been quite equal to him, or have surpassed him, as
Cowper for instance, in the picturesque part of his art,
in marking the peculiar features and curious details of
objects; no one has yet come up to him in giving the
Btim total of their effects, their varying influences on the
mind. He does not go into the minuticB of a landscape,
hut descrihes the vivid impression which the whole makes
upon his own imagination, and thus transfers the same
unbroken, unimpaired impression to the imagination of .
his readers. The colours with which he paints seem yet
wet and breathing, like those of the living statue in the
Winter's Tale. Nature in his descriptions is seen grow-
ing around us, fresh and lusty as in itself. We feel thel
effect of the atmosphere, its humidity or clearness, its
heat or cold, the glow of summer, the gloom of winter,
the tender promise of the spring, the fuU overshadow-
ing foliage, the declining pomp and deepening tints of
autumn. He transports us to the scorching heat of ver-
tical suns, or plunges us into the chilling horrors and
desolation of the frozen zone. We hear the snow drifting
figainst the broken casement without, and see the flre
blazing on the hearth within. The first scattered drops
of a vernal shower patter on the leaves above our heads,
or the coming storm resounds through the leafless groves.
In a word, he describes not to the eye alone, but to the

116 On Thomson and Cowper.

other senses, and to the whole man. He pnts his heart
into his subject, writes as he feels, and humanises what-
ever he touches. He makes all his descriptions teem
with life and vivifying soul. His faults were those of
his style — of the author and the man; but the original
genius of the poet, the pith and marrow of his imagina-
tion, the fine natural mould in which his feelings were
bedded, were too much for him to counteract by neglect,
or affectation, or false ornaments. It is for this reason
that he is, perhaps, the most popular of all our poets,
treating of a subject that all can understand, and in a
way that is interesting to aU alike, to the ignorant or the
refined, because he gives back the impression which the
things themselves make upon us in nature. " That," said
a man of genius,* seeing a little shabby soiled copy of
Thomson's Seasons lying on the window-seat of an obscure
country alehouse, " That is true fame !"

It has been supposed by some, that the Castle of In-
dolence is Thomson's best poem; but that is not the
case. He has in it, indeed, poured out the whole soul of
indolence, diffuse, relaxed, supine, dissolved into a volup-
tuous dream, and surrounded himself with a set of objects
and companions, in entire unison with the listlessness of
his own temper. Nothing can well go beyond the descrip-
tions of these inmates of the place and their luxurious,
pampered way of life — of him who came among them like
" a burnished fly in month of June/' but soon left them on
his heedless way ; and him

" For whom the merry bells had rung, I ween,
If in this nook of quiet, beUs had ever been."

The in-door quiet and cushioned ease, where " all was one
full-swelling bed ;" the out-of-door stillness, broken only
by " the stock-dove*s plaint amid the forest deep — "
•* That drowsy rustled to the sighing gale " —

* Coleridge. See Memoirs of W. Hazlitt, 1867, i. 65.— Ed.

On Thomson cmd Cowper. 117

Are in the most perfect and delightful keeping. But still
there are no passages in this exquisite little production of
sportive ease and &ncy, equal to the best of those in the
Seasons. Warton, in his Essay on Pope, was the first
to point out and do jnstioe to some of these ; for instance,
to the description of the effects of the contagion among
our ships at Carthagena — '^of the frequent corse heard
nightly plunged amid the sullen waves," and to the descrip-
tion of the pilgrims lost in the deserts of Arabia. This
last passage, profound and striking as it is, is not free

from those faults of style which I have already noticed :

" Breath'd hot

From all the boundless furnace of the sky.

And the wide-glitf ring waste of burning sand,

A suffocating wind the pilgrim dmites

With instant death. Patient of thirst and toil,

Son of the desert, eVn the camel feels

Shot through his wither'd heart the fiery blast,

Or from the black-red ether, bursting broad.

Sallies the sudden whirlwind. Straight the sands,

Commoy'd around, in gath'ring eddies play ;

Nearer and nearer still they dark'ning come,

TiQ with the gen'ral all-involving storm

Swept up, the whole continuous wilds arise,

And by their noon-day fount dejected thrown.

Or sunk at night in sad disastrous sleep,

Beneath descending hills the caravan

Is buried deep. In Cairo's crowded streets,

Th' impatient merchant, wond'ring, waits in vain ;

And Mecca saddens at the long delay."

There are other passages of equal beauty with these ; such

as that of the hunted stag, followed by " the inhuman rout ":

" '- That from the shady depth

Expel him, circling through his ev'ry shift.
He sweeps (he forest oft, and sobbing sees
The glades mild opening to the golden day,
Where in kind contest with his butting friends
He wont to struggle, or his loves enjoy."

The whole of the description of the frozen zone, in the
Winter, is perhaps even finer and more thoroughly felt,

118 On Thomson and Cowper.

as being done from early associations, than that of the>
torrid zone in his Summer. Anything more beantifol
than the following account of the Siberian exiles is, I
think, hardly to be found in the whole range of poetry :

'' There thiongh the prison of unbounded wilds,
Barr'd by the hand of nature &om escape,
Wide roams the Bussian exile. Kought around
Strikes his sad eye but deserts lost in snow.
And heavy-loaded groves, and solid floods,
That stretch athwart the solitary vast
Their icy horrors to the frozen main ; ;

And cheerless towns fiur distant, never bless'd,
Save when its annual course the caravan
Bends to the golden course of rich Cathay,
With news of human kind."

The feeling of loneliness, of distance, of lii^ering,
slow-revolying years of pining expectation, of desolation
within and without the heart, was never more finely ex-
pressed than it is here.

The account which follows of the employments of the
Polar night — of the journeys of the natives by moonlight,
drawn by reindeer, and of the return of spring in Lapland—

" Where pure Niemi's fidry mountains rise,
And fring'd with roses Tenglio rolls his stream*'-—

is equally picturesque and striking in a different way.
The traveller lost in the snow is a well-known and ad-
mirable dramatic episode. I prefer, however, giving one
example of our author's skill in painting common domestic
scenery, as it will bear a more immediate comparison with
the style of some later writers on such subjects. It is of
little consequence what passage we take. The following
description of the first setting-in of winter is, perhaps, as
pleasing as any :

" Through the hushed air the whitening shower descends.
At first thin wav'ring, till at last the flakes
Fall broad and wide, and fetst, dimming the day
With a continual flow. The oherish'd fields
Put on their winter-robe of purest white : ')

On Thomson and Cowper, 119

'Tis brightness all, save where the new snow melts
Along the mazy current. Low the woods
Bow their hoar head ; and ere the languid Sun
Faint from the West emits his eVning ray,
Earth's universal face, deep hid and chill,
Is one wide dazzling waste, that buries wide
The works of man. Drooping, the lab*rer-ox
Stands cover'd o'er with snow, and then demands
The fruit of all his toil. The fowls of heav'n,
Tam'd by the cruel season, crowd around
The winnowing store, and claim the little boon
Which Proyidence assigns them. One alone,
The redbreast, sacred to the household gods.
Wisely regardful of the embroiling sky.
In joyless fields and thorny thickets leaves
His shivering mates, and pays to trusted man
His annual visit. Half -afraid, he first
Against the window beats ; then, brisk, alights '

' On the warm hearth ; then hopping o'er the floor,

Eyes all the smiling family askance.
And pecks, and starts, and wonders where he is '
Till more familiar grown, the table-crumbs
Attract his slender feet. The foodless wilds
Pour forth their brown inhabitants. The hare.
Though timorous of heart, and hard beset
By death in various forms, dark, snares and dogs,
And more unpitying men, the garden seeks,
Urg'd on by fearless want. The bleating kind
Eye the bleak heav*n, and next the glist'ning earth.
With looks of dumb despair ; then sad, dispers'd,
Dig for the wither'd herb through heaps of snow."

It is thus that Thomson always gives a moral sense to nature.
Thomson's blank verse is not harsh, or utterly nntnne-
able ; bnt it is heavy and monotonous ; it seems always
labouring up-hill. The selections which have been made
from his works in Enfield's Speaker and other books of
extracts, do not convey the most fiEtvoural^le idea of his
genius or taste, such as Falemon and Lavinia, Damon
and Musidora, Celadon and Amelia. Those parts of any
author which are most liable to be stitched in worsted,
and framed and glazed, are not by any means always

120 On Thomson and Cowper

the best. The moral descriptions and reflections in the
Seasons are in an admirable spirit, and written with great
force and fervour.

His poem on Liberty is not equally good : his Miise
was too easy and good-natured for the subject, which
required as much indignation against unjust and arbi-
trary power, as complacency in the constitutional mon-
archy, under which, just afber the expulsion of the Stuarts
and the establishment of the House of Hanover in
contempt of the claims of hereditary pretenders to ihe
throne, Thomson lived. Thomson was but an indi£ferent
hater; and the most indispensable part of the love of
liberty has unfortunately hitherto been the hatred of
'tyranny. Spleen is the soul of patriotism, and of public
good: but you would not expect a man who has been
seen eating peaches off a tree with both hands in his
waistcoat pockets, to be " overrun with the spleen," or to
heat himself needlessly about an abstract proppsition. ^

His plays are liable to the same objection. They are
never acted and seldom read. The author could not, or
would not, put himself out of his way to enter into the
situations and passions of others, particularly of a tragic
kind. The subject of Tancred and Sigismunda, which is
taken from a serious episode in Gil Bias, is an admirable
one, but poorly handled : the ground may be considered
as still unoccupied.

Cowper, whom I shall speak of in this connection, lived
at a considerable distance of time after Thomson, and
had some advantages over him, particularly in simplicity
of style, in a certain precision and minuteness of graphical
description, and in a more careful and leisurely choice of
I \ such topics only as his genius and peculiar habits of mind
prompted him to treat of. The Task has fewer blemishes
than the Seasons ; but it has not the same capital excel-
lence, the "unbought grace" of poetry, the power of
moving and infusing the warmth of the author's mind

i

On Thomson and Cowper. 121

into that of the reader. If Cowper had a mere polished \ ^
taste, Thomson had beyond comparison a more fertile !
genins, more impulsive force, a more entire forgetfulness
of himself in his subject. If in Thomson you are some-
times offended with the sloveliness of the author by pro-
fession, determined to get through his task at all events,
in Cowper you are no less dissatisfied with the finicalness
of the private gentleman, who does not care whether he
completes his work or not, and in whatever he does, is
evidently more solicitous to please himself than the public.
There is an effeminacy about him which shrinks from, and
repels common and hearty sympathy. With all his boasted
simj^city and love of the country, he seldom launches
out into general descriptions of nature ; he looks at her
over his clipped hedges, and from his well-swept garden-
walks ; or if he makes a bolder experiment now and then,
it is with an air of precaution, as if he were afraid of
being caught in a shower of rain, or of not being able, in
case of any untoward accident, to make good his retreat
home. He shakes hands with nature with a pair of fashion-
able gloves on, and leads '< his Yashti '* forth to public view
with a look of consciousness and attention to etiquette,
as a fine gentleman hands a lady out to dance a minuet.
He is delicate to fastidiousness, and glad to get back,
after a romantic adventure with crazy Eate, a party oi
gypsies or a little child on a common, to the drawing-
room and the ladies again, to the sofa and the tea-kettle —
no, I beg his pardon, not to the singing, well-scoured tea-
kettle, but to the polished and loud-hissing urn. His
walks and arbours are kept clear of worms and snails
with as much an appearance of jfetU-maUreship as of
humanity. He has some of the sic^y sensibility and
pampered refinements of Pope; but then Pope prided
himself in them : whereas Cowper affects to be all sim-
plicity and plainness. He had neither Thomson's love of,
the unadorned beauties of nature nor Pope's exquisite

122 On Thomson and Cowper.

sense of the elegances of art. He was in fact a nervous
man, afraid of trusting himself to the seductions of the
one, and ashamed of putting forward his pretensions to an
intimacy with the other : but to be a coward, is not the
I way to succeed either in poetry, in war, or in loye I Still
{he is a genuine poet, and deserves all his reputation.
His worst vices are amiable weaknesses, elegant trifling.
Though there is a frequent dryness, timidity, and jejune-
ness in his manner, he has left a number of pictures of
domestic comfort and social refinement, as well as of
natural imagery and feeling, which can hardly be for-
gotten but with the language itself. Such, among others,
are his memorable description of the post coming in, that
of the preparations for tea in a winter's evening in the
country, of the unexpected fall of snow, of the frosty
morning (^th the fine satirical transition to the Empress
of Bussia's palace of ice), and, most of all, the winter's
walk at noon. Every one of these may be considered as
distinct studies, or highly-finished cabinet-pieces, arranged
without order or coherence. I shall be excused for giving
the last of them, as what has always appeared to me one
of the most feeling, elegant, and perfect specimens of this
writer^s manner :

" The night was winter in his roughest mood ;
The morning sharp and clear. But now at noon
Upon the southern side of the slant hills,
And where the woods fence off the northern blast, * >

The season smiles, resigning all its rage, . .«

And has the warmth of May. The vault is blue.
Without a cloud, and white without a speck
The dazzling splendour of the scene below.
Again the harmony comes o'er the vale ;
J And through the trees I view th' embattled toVr,
"Whence all the music. I again perceive
The soothing influence of the wafted strains,
And settle in soft musings as I tread
The walk, still verdant, under oaks and elms.
Whose outspread branches over-arch the glade.

I*

41

On Thomson and Cotuper. 125

, The roo^ thongh movable through all its length,

As the wind sways it, has yet well snffic'd,
And, intercepting in their silent fall
The frequent flakes, has kept a path for me.
No noise is here, or none that hinders thonght.
The redbreast warbles still, but is content
With slender notes, and more than half suppressed.
Pleas'd with his solitude, and flitting light
From spray to spray, where'er he rests he shakes
From many a twig the pendant drops of ice,
That tinkle in the withered leaves below.
Stillness, accompanied with sounds so soft.
Charms more than silence. Meditation here
May think down hours to moments. Here the heart
May give a useful lesson to the head,
And Learning wiser grow without his books.
Knowledge and Wisdom, far from being one.
Have oft-times no connection. Elnowledge dwells
In heads replete with thoughts of other men :
Wisdom in minds attentive to their own.
Books are not seldom talismans and spells,
By which the magic art of shrewder wits
Holds an unthinking multitude enthralled.
Some to the fascination of a name ;

V Surrender judgment hood-wink'd. Some the style ^

In&tuates, and through labyrinths and wilds
Of error leads them, by a tune entranced.
While sloth seduces more, too weak to bear
The insupportable fatigue of thought,
And swallowing therefore without pause or choice
The total grist unsifted, husks and all.
But trees and rivulets, whose rapid course
Defies the check of winter, haunts of deer
And sheep-walks populous with bleating lambs,
And lanes, in which the primrose ere her time
Peeps through the moss that clothes the hawthorn root,
Deceive no student. Wisdom there, and truth
Not shy as in the world, and to be won
By slow solicitation, seize at once
The roving thought, and fix it on themselves."

His satire is also excellent. It is pointed and forcible^
with the polished manners of the gentleman and th&

124 On ThoniBon and Cmoper.

honest indignation of the virtuous man. Si^ religious

poetry, except where it takes a tincture of controversial

heat, wants elevation and fire. His Muse had not a

fieraph's wing. I might refer, in illustration of this

opinion, to the laboured anticipation of the Millennium

at the end of the sixth book.* He could describe a piece

of shell-work as well as any modem poet : but he could

not describe the New Jerusalem so well as John Bunyan ;

-«-nor are his verses on Alexander Selkirk so good as

Bobinson Crusoe. The one is not so much like a vision,

. < nor is the other so much like the reality.

\ The first volume of Cowi)er's poems has, however, been

\ less read than it deserved. The comparison in these poems

of the proud and humble believer to the peacock and the

pheasant, and the parallel between Voltaire and the poor

cottager, are exquisite pieces of eloquence and poetry, par-

/ticularly the last :

" Yon cottager, who weaves at her own door,
Pillow and bobbins all her little store ;
Content thongh mean, and cheerful if not gay,
ShnfiUng her threads about the live-long day,
Just earns a scanty pittance, and at night
Lies down secure, her heart and pocket light.
She, for her humble sphere by nature fit.
Has little understanding and no wit,
Beceives no praise ; but, though her lot be such

^ (Toilsome and Indigent), she renders much ;

; Just knows, and knows no more, her Bible true —

; , : A truth the brilliant Frenchman never knew ;

^ ► , And in that charter reads with sparkling eyes

Her title to a treasure in the skies.

\ O happy peasant ! O unhappy bard !

His the mere tinsel, hers the rich reward ;
' \ He prais'd, perhaps, for ages yet to come,

She never heard of half a mile from home : '

He lost in errors his vain heart prefers.

She safe in the simplicity of hers."

* Of the Tflw^.— E».

On Thomson and Cowper. 12&

His character of Whitfield, in the poem on Hope, is
one of his^ostjspirited and striking things. It is written
con amore :

** But if, nnblameable in word and thonght,
A man arise, a man whom Grod haa taught.
With all Elijah's dignity of tone
And all the love of the beloved John,
To stonn the citadels they build in air,
To smite the untemper*d wall ('tis death to spare).
To sweep away all refuges of Hes,
And place, instead of quirks, themselves devise,
Lama Sabachthani before their eyes ;
To show that without Christ all gain is loss,
All hope despair that stands not on His cross ;
Except a few his God may have impressed,
A tenfold phrensy seizes all the rest."

These lines were quoted, soon after their appearance, by
the Monthly Beviewers, to show that Cowper was no poet,
though they afterwards took credit to themselyes for
having been the first to introduce his verses to the notice
of the pubHc. It is not a little remarkable that these
same critics regularly damned, at its first coming out,
every work which has since acquired a standard reputation
with the public. Cowper's verses on his mother's picture,,
and his lines to Mary, are some of the most pathetic that
ever were written. His stanzas on the loss of the Boyal
George have a masculine strength and feeling beyond what
was usual with him. The story of John Gilpin has perhaps
given as much pleasure to as many people as anything of
the same length that ever was written.

His life was an unhappy one. It was embittered by a
morbid affection and by his religious sentiments. Nor are
we to wonder at this, or bring it as a charge against re-
ligion ; for it is the nature of the poetical temperament to
carry everything to excess, whether it be love, religion,
pleasure, or pain, as we may see in the case of Cowper
and of Bums, and to find torment or rapture in that in

126 On Thomson and Cowper.

wbich others merely find a resource from ennui, or a relaxa-
tion from common occupation.

There are two poets still liying who belong to the same
class of excellence, and of whom I shall here say a f^w
words : I mean Crabbe, and Bobert Bloomfield, the author
of the Farmer's Boy. As a painter of simple natural
scenery, and of the still life of the country, few writers
have more undeniable and unassuming pretensions than
the ingenious and self-taught poet last-mentioned. Among
the sketches of this sort I would mention, as equally dis-
tinguished for delicacy, faithfulness, and naiVe^, his de-
scription of lambs racing, of the pigs going out an acoming,
of the boy sent to feed his sheep before the break of day
in winter ; and I might add the innocently-told story of
the poor bird-boy, who in vain through the Hvo-long day
•expects his promised companions dt his hut, to share his
feast of roasted sloes with him, as an example of that
humble pathos in which this author excels. The i&xHt
indeed of his genius is that it is too humble : his Muse
has something not only rustic, but menial in her aspect.
He seems afiraid of elevating nature, lest she should be
ashamed of him. Bloomfield very beautifully describes
the lambs in spring-time as racing round the hillocks of
green turf: Thomson, in describing the same; image,
makes the mound of earth the remains of an old Boman
encampment. Bloomfield never gets beyond his own ex-
perience; and that is somewhat confined. He gives the
simple appearance of nature, but he gives it naked, shiver-
ing, and unclothed with the drapery of a moral imagina-
tion. His poetry has much the effect of the first approach
of spring, " while yet the year is unconfirmed," where a few '
tender buds venture forth here and there, but are chilled
[ by the early frosts and nipping breath of poverty. It
j should seem from this and other instances that have
occurred within the last century, that we cannot expect
^om original genius alone, without education, in modem

On Thomsoi} and Cowp&i\

127

«nd more artificial periods, the same bold and independent
ises^ts as in former periods. And one reason appears to
be that, though such persons, from whom we might at first
•expect a restoration of the good old times of poetry, are
not encumbered and enfeebled by the trammels of custom
and the dull weight of other meh's ideas, yet they are
oppressed by the consciousness of a want of the common
advantages which others have, are looking at the tinsel
finery of the age, while they neglect the rich unexplored
mine in their own breasts, and instead of setting an ex-
ample for the world to follow, spend their lives in aping,
or in the despair of aping, the hackneyed accomplishments
of their inferiors. Another cause may be, that original
genius alone is not suf&cient to produce the highest ex-
cellence without a corresponding state of manners, pas-
sions, and religious belief — that no single mind can move
in direct opposition to the vast machine of the world
around it — that the poet can do no more than stamp the
mind of his age upon his works — and that all that the
ambition of the highest genius can hope to arrive at affier
the lapse of one or two generations, is the perfection of
that more refined and effeminate style of studied elegance
and adventitious ornament, which is the result, not of '
nature, but of art. In fact, no other style of poetry has ',
succeeded, or seems likely to succeed, in the present day.
The public taste hangs like a millstone round the neck of
all original genius that does not conform to established
and exclusive models. The writer is not only without
popular sympathy, but without a rich and varied mass of
materials for his mind to work upon and assimilate un-
consciously to itself; his attempts at originality are
looked upon as affectation, and in the end degenerate into
it from the natural spirit of contradiction and the con-*
stant uneasy sense of disappointment and undeserved
ridicule. But to return.

Crabbe is, if not the most natural, the most Hteral of

\c

. --»■

V

C' •

128 On Thomson and Cowper.

our descriptive poets. He exhibits the smallest circnin*
stances of the smallest things. He gives the very costume
of meanness, the non-essentials of every trifling incidents
He is his own landscape-painter and engraver too. His
pastoral scenes seem pricked on paper in little dotted
lines. He describes the interior of a cottage like a^
person sent there to distrain for rent. He has an eye to
the number of arms in an old worm-eaten chair, and takes
care to inform himself and the reader whether a joint-
stool stands upon three legs or upon four. If a settle by
the fire-side stands awry, it gives him as much disturbance
as a tottering world : and he records the rent in a ragged
counterpane as an event in history. He is equally curious
in his backgrounds and in his figures. You know the
christian and surnames of every one of his heroes, the
dates of their achievements, whether on a Sunday or a
Monday, their place of birth and burial, the colour of
their clothes and of their hair, and whether they squinted
or not. He takes an inventory of the human heart
exactly in the same manner as of the furniture of a sick
room : his sentiments have very much the air of fixtures ;
ho gives you the petrifEtction of a sigh, and carves a tear»
to the life, in stone. Almost all his characters are tired
of their lives, and you heartily wish them dead. They^
remind one of anatomical preservations, or may be said
to bear the same relation to actual life that a stuffed cat in
a glass-case does to the real one purring on the hearth : the
skin is the same, but the life and the sense of heat is
gone. Crabbe's poetry is like a museum or curiosity^
shop : everything has the same posthumous appearance
the same inanimateness and identity of character. If
Bloomfield is too much of the fanuer^s boy, Grabbe is too
[ much of the parish beadle, [of] an overseer of the country
poor. He has no delight beyond the walls of a work-
house, and his ofi&cious zeal would convert the world into-
a vast infirmary. He is a kind of Ordinary, not of New-*

Orahbe—The Pastoral. 129

gate, but of nature. His poetical morality is taken from
Bom's Justice, or the Statutes against Vagrants. He sets
his own imagination in the stocks, and his Muq^ like
MalyolioL" ^^M^ cros s garte rs." He collects all the petty
vices of the human heart, and superintends, as in a panop-
ticon, a select circle of rural malefactors. He makes out
the poor to be as bad as the rich — a sort of vermin for the
others to hunt down and trample upon, and this he thinks
a good piece of work. With him there are but two moral
categories, riches and poverty, authority and dependence.
His parish apprentice, Bichard Monday, and his wealthy
baronet, Sir Bichard Monday, of Monday Place, are the
same individual — ^the extremes of the same character, and
of his whole system. " The latter end of his Common-
wealth does not forget the beginning." But his parish
ethics are the very worst models for a state : anything
more degrading and helpless cannot well be imagined.
He exhibits just the contrary view of human life to that
which Glay luus done in his Beggar's Opera. In a word. [
Crabbe is the only poet who has attempted and succeeded -.
in the slill life of tragedy : who gives the stagnation of \
hope and fear — ^the deformity of vice without the tempta-
tion — the pain of sympathy without the interest — ^and
who seems to rely, for the delight he is to convey to his
reader, on the truth and accuracy with which he de-
scribes only what is disagreeable.

The best descriptive poetry is not, after all, to be found
in our descriptive poets. There are set descriptions of
the flowers, for instance, in Thomson, Cowper, and others ;
but none equal to those in Milton's Lycidas and in the
Winter's Tale.

We have few good pastorals in the language. Our
manners are not Arcadian ; our climate is not an eternal
spring; our age is not the age of gold. We have no pastoral
writers equal to Theocritus,* nor any landscapes like

* Except, perhaps, Allan Bamsay, whose Gentle Shepherd was

K

130 The English Poeb.

those of Claude Lorraine. The best parts of Spenser's
Shepherd's Calendar are two fables, Mother Hubbard's
Tale, and the Oak and the Briar; which last is as splendid
a piece of oratory as any to be fonnd in the records of the
eloquence of the British senate ! Browne, who came
after Spenser, and Wither have left some pleasing allego-
rical poems of this kind. Pope's are as full of senseless
finery and trite affectation, as if a peer of the realm were
to sit for his picture with a crook and cocked hat on,
smiling with an insipid air of no-meaning, between nature
and fashion. Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia is a lasting
monument of perverted power; where an image of ex-
treme beauty, as that of " the shepherd boy piping as
though he should never be old," peeps out once in a
hundred folio pages, amidst heaps of intricate sophistry
and scholastic quaintness. It is not at all like Nicholas
Poussin's picture, in which he represents some shepherds
wandering out in a morning of the spring, and coming to
a tomb with this inscription — " I also was an Arcadian 1"
Perhaps the best pastoral in the language is that prose-
poem, Walton's Complete Angler. That well-known work
has a beauty and romantic interest equal to its simplicity,
and arising out of it. In the description of a fishing-
tackle, you perceive the piety and humanity of the author's
mind. It is to be doubted whether Sannazarius's Pisca-
tory Eclogues are equal to the scenes described by Walton
on the banks of the river Lea. He gives the feeling of
the open air : we walk with him along the dusty road-side,
or repose on the banks of the river under a shady tree ;
and in watching for the finny prey, imbibe what he
beautifully calls " the patience and simplicity of poor
honest fishermen." We accompany them to dieir inn at

produced in a climate even less Arcadian than that of England.
Gay*s Pastorals scarcely answer to the description. They are not,
strictly speaking, bucolics. — Ed.

Writers of Pastoral, dtc. 131

night, and partake of their simple hut delicious &a*e;
whQe Maud, the pretty milk-maid, at her mother's desire,
sings the classical ditties* of the poet Marlowe : " Come
live with me, and be my love." Good cheer is not
neglected in this work, any more than in Homer, or any
other history that sets a proper value on the good things
of this life. The prints in the Complete Angler give an
additional reality and interest to the scenes it describes.
While Tottenham Cross shall stand, and longer, thy work,
amiable and happy old man, shall last! It is in* the notes
to it that we find that character of ^'a fair and happy
milk-maid," by Sir Thomas Overbury, which may vie in.
beauty and feeling with Chaucer's character of Griselda :

^' A fair and happy milk-maid is a coimtry wench that is so far
from making herself beautiful by art, that one look of hers is able
to put all face-physio out of countenance. She knows a fair look
is but a dumb orator to commend virtue, therefore minds it not.
All her excellences stand in her so silently, as if they had stolen
upon her without her knowledge. The lining of her apparel (which
is herself) is far better than outsides of tissue ; for though she be
not arrayed in the spoil of the silk -worm, she is decked in innocency,
a far better wearing. She doth not, with lying long a-bed, spoil
both her complexion and conditions. Nature hath taught her too
immoderate sleep is rust to the soul : she rises therefore with chan-
ticleer, her dame's cock, and at night makes the lamb her curfew. . . .
Her breath is her own, which scents all the year long of June, like
a new-made haycock. She makes her hand hard with labour, and
her heart soft with pity; and when winter evenings fall early
(sitting at her merry wheel) she sings a defiance to the giddy wheel
of Fortune. She doth all things with so sweet a grace, it seems
ignorance will not suffer her to do ill, being her mind is to do weU.
She bestows her year's wages at next fair; and in choosing her
garments, counts no bravery in the world like decency. The garden
and bee-hive are all her physic and chirurgery, and she lives the
longer for't. She dares go alone and unfold sheep in the nigh^
and fears no manner of ill, because she means none : yet, to say the
truth, she is never alone, for she is still accompanied with old songs,
honest thoughts, and prayers, but short ones ; yet they have their

'*' Bitty, not ditties; the other songs introduced into the work
are not Marlowe's. — Ed.

132 The English Foets.

efficacy, in that they are not palled with ensuing idle cogitations.
Lastly, her dreams are so chaste, that she dare tell them ; only a
Friday's dream is all her superstition ; that she conceals for fear of
anger. Thus lives she ; and all her care is she may die in the spring-
time to have store of flowers stuck upon her winding-sheet."

The love of the country has been sung by poets, and
echoed by philosophers ; but the first have not attempted,
and the last have been greatly puzzled, to account for it.
I do not know that any one has ever explained satisfac-
torily the true source of this feeling, or of that soothing
emotion which the sight of the country, or a lively descrip-
tion of rural objects, hardly ever fails to infuse into the
mind. Some have ascribed this feeling to the natural
beauty of the objects themselves : others to the freedom
from care, the silence and tranquillity which scenes of
retirement afford ; others to the healthy and innocent em-
ployments of a country life ; others to the simplicity of
country manners, and others to a variety of different
causes ; but none to the right one. All these, indeed, have
their effect ; but there is another principal one which has
not been touched upon, or only slightly glanced at. I
will not, however, imitate Mr. Home Tooke, who, after
enumerating seventeen different definitions of the verb,
and laughing at them all as deficient and nugatory, at the
end of two quarto volumes does not tell us what the verb
really is, and has left posterity to pluck out ^' the heart
of his mystery." I will say at once what it is that dis-
tinguishes this interest from others, and that is its
abstractedness. The interest we feel in human nature is
exclusive, and confined to the individual ; the interest we
feel in external nature is common, and transferable from
one object to all others of the same class. Thus :

Bousseau in his Confessions relates, that when he took
possession of his room at Annecy, he found that he could
see " a little spot of green " from his window, which en-
deared his situation the more to him, because, he says, it

Leaoff^ftive Poetry, dte, 133

was the first time he had had this object constantly before
him since he left Boissy, the place where he was at school
when a child.* Some snch feeling as that here described
will be fonnd Inrking at the bottom of all onr attachments
of this sort. Were it not for the recollections habitually
associated with them, natural objects could not interest
the mind in the manner they do. No doubt, the sky is
beautiful, the clouds sail majestically along its bosom ; the
sun is cheering ; there is something exquisitely graceful
in the manner in which a plant or tree puts forth its
branches ; the motion with which they bend and tremble in
the evening breeze is sof fc and lovely ; there is music in the
babbling of a brook ; the view from the top of a moun-
tain is full of grandeur ; nor can we behold the ocean
with indifference. Or, as the Minstrel sweetly sings :

'^ Oh, how canst thou renounce the boundless store

Of charms which nature to her votary yields !
The warbling woodland, the resounding shore,

The pomp of groves, and garniture of fields ;
All that the genial ray of morning gilds.

And all that echoes to the song of even.
All that the mountain's sheltering bosom shields.

And all the dread magnificence of heaven ;
Oh, how canst thou renounce, and hope to be forgiven 1"

It is not, however, the beautiful and magnificent alono
that we admire in Nature; the most insignificant and
rudest objects are often found connected with the strongest
emotions ; we become attached to the most common and
familiar images, as to the face of a friend whom we have
long known, and from whom we have received many
benefits. It is because natural objects have been associated
with the sports of our childhood, with air and exercise,
with our feelings in solitude, when the mind takes the
strongest hold of things, and clings with the fondest
interest to whatever strikes its attention : with change of

* Pope also declares that he had a particular regard for an old
post which stood in the court-yard before the house where he was
brought up.

\

134 The EngUsh Poets.

place, the pursuit of new scenes, and thoughts of distant
friends ; it is because they have surrounded us in aknost
all situations, in joy and in sorrow, in pleasure and in
pain ; because they have been one chief source and nourish-
ment of our feelings, and a part of our being, that we love
them as we do ourselves.

There is, generally speaking, the same foundation for
our love of Nature as for all our habitual attachments,
namely, association of ideas. ' But this is not all. That
which distinguishes this attachment from others is the
transferable nature of our feelings with respect to physical
objects; the associations connected with any one object
extending to the whole class. Our having been attached
to any particular person does not make us feel the same
attachment to the next person we may chance to meet ;
but, if we have once associated strong feelings of delight
with the objects of natural scenery, the tie becomes indis-
soluble, and we shall ever after feel the same attachment
to other objects of the same sort. I remember when I was
abroad * the trees and grass and wet leaves, rustling in
the wajks of the Tuileries, seemed to be as much English,
f be as much the same trees and grass that I had always
been used to, as the sun shining over my head was the
^ same sun which I saw in England ; the faces only were
foreign to me. Whence comes this difference ? It arises
from our always imperceptibly connecting the idea of the
individual with man, and only the idea of the class with
natural objects. In the one case, the external appearance
or physical structure is the least thing to be attended to ;
in the other, it is everything. The springs that move
the human form, and make it friendly or adverse to me,
lie hid within it. There is an infinity of motives, passions,
and ideas contained in that narrow compass, of which I
know nothing, and in which I have no share. Each in-
dividual is a world to himself, governed by a thousand

* In 1802.— Ed.

/

Descriptive Poetry^ &e. 135

contradictory and wayward impulses. I can therefore
make no inference from one individual to another ; nor
can my habitual sentiments, with respect to any individual,
extend beyond himself to others* A crowd of people
presents a disjointed, confused, and unsatisfactory appear-
ance to the eye, because there is nothing to connect the
motley assemblage into one continuous or general impres-
sion, unless when there is some common object of interest
to fix their attention, as in the case of a full pit at the
play-house The same principle will also account for
that feeling of littleness, vacuity, and perplexity, which a
stranger feeJs on entering the streets of a populous city.
Every individual he meets is a blow to his personal
identity. Every new face is a teasing, unanswered riddle.
He feels the Sime wearisome sensation in walking from
Oxford Street to Temple Bar, as a person would do who
should be compeled to read through the first leaf of all
the volumes in a Ibrary. But it is otherwise with respect
to Nature. A flock of sheep is not a contemptible, but a
beautiful sigbt. The greatest number and variety of
physical objects do not puzzle the will, or distract the
attention, bul are massed together under one uniform and
harmonious fieling. The heart reposes in greater security
on the immensity of Nature's works, " expatiates freely
there," and iuds elbow-room and breathing-space. We are
always at bene with Nature. There is neither hypocrisy,
caprice, nor cnental reservation in her favours. Our in-
tercourse wih her is not liable to accident or change,
suspicion or disappointment : she smiles on us still the
same. A ros is always sweet, a lily is always beautiful :
we do not hae the one, nor envy the other. If we have
once enjoyedlJie cool shade of a tree, and been lulled into
a deep reposby the sound of a brook running at its foot,
we are sure tat wherever we can find a shady stream, we
can enjoy th same pleasure again; so that when we
imagine thes objects, we can easily form a mystic per-

136 The English Pods.

Bonification of the friendly power that inliabits them,
Dryad or Naiad, offering its cool fountain or its tempting
shade. Hence the origin of the Grecian mythology. All
objects of the same kind being the same, not only in their
appearance, but in their practical uses, we habitually eon-
found them together under the same general idea,- and
whatever fondness we may have conceived for one, is
immediately placed to the common account. Tie most
opposite kinds and remote trains of feeling gradually go
to enrich the same sentiment ; and in our love cf Nature,
there is all the force pf individual attachment combined
with the most airy abstraction. It is this c^umstance
which gives that refinement, expansion and vild interest
to feelings of this sort, when strongly excited which every
one must have experienced, who is a true Icver of Nature.
It is the same setting sun that we see and remember
year after year, through summer and viBter, seed-timo
and harvest. The moon that shines ab^ve our heads, or
plays through the chequered shade, ia the same moon
that we used to read of in Mrs. Badcliff(^s romances. We
see no difference in the trees first covered with leaves in
the spring. The dry reeds rustling on the side of a
stream — the woods swept by the loud blasi — the dark
massy foliage of autumn — the grey trunks i and naked
branches of the trees in winter — the sequesered copse,
and wide-extended heath — the glittering sui|Ly showers
and December snows — are still the same, or a|companied
with the same thoughts and feelings : there ij no object,
however trifling or rude, that does not in sohe mood or
other find its way into the heart, as a link in lie chain of
our living being; and this it is that make good that
saying of the poet :

^^ To me the meanest flower that blows oan gi »
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for

Thus Nature is a kind of universal home, andlvery object
it presents to us, an old acquaintanco wit unaltered

Descriptive Poetry, &c. 137

looks; for there is tliat consent and mntual harmony
among all her works, one midivided spirit pervading them
thronghout, that to him who has well acquainted In'm Be lf
with them, they speak always the same well-known
language, striking on the heart, amidst unquiet thoughts
and the tumult of the world, like the music of one's native
tongue heard in some far-off country :

" My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky :
So was it when my life began,
So is it now I am a man,
So shall it be when I grow old and dio.
The child's the father of the man,
And I wonld have my years to be
Linked each to each by natural piety."

The daisy that first strikes the child's eye in trying to
leap over his own shadow, is the same flower that with
timid upward glance implores the grown man not to
tread upon it. Rousseau, in one of his botanical excur-
sions, meeting with the periwinkle, fell upon his knees,
crying out — Ah ! voila de la pervenche I It was because
he had thirty years before brought home the same flower
with him in one of his rambles with Madame de Warens,
near Chambery. It struck him as the same identical
little blue flower that he remembered so well ; and thirty
years of sorrow and bitter regret were effaced from his
memory. That, or a thousand other flowers of the same
name, were the same to him, to the heart, and to the eye •
but there was but one Madame Warens in the world,
whose image was never absent from his thoughts: with
whom flowers and verdure sprang up beneath' his feet,
and without whom all was cold and barren in nature and
in his own breast. The cuckoo, " that wandering voice "
that comes and goes with the spring, mocks our ears with
one note from .youth to age; and the lapwing, screaming
round the traveller's path, repeats for ever the same sad
fitory of Tereus and Philomel I

( 138 )

LECTUEE VI.

ON GAY, SWIFT, YOUNG, COLLINS, &0.

I SHALL in the present Lecture go back to the ago of
Queen Anne, and endeavour to give a cursory account of
the most eminent of our poets, of whom I have not already
spoken, from that period to the present.

The three principal poets among the wits of Queen
Anne's reign, next to Pope, were Prior, Swift, and Gray.
Pamell, though a good-natured, easy man, and a friend
to poets and the Muses, was himself little more than an
occasional versifier; and Arbuthnot, who had as much
wit as the best of them, chose to show it in prose, and not
in verse. He had a very notable share in the immortal
History of John Bull, and the inimitable and praise-
worthy Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus. There has
been a great deal said and written about the plagiarisms
of Sterne; but the only real plagiarism he has been
guilty of (if such theft were a crime), is in taking Tris-
tram Shandy's father from Martin's, the elder Scriblerus,
The original idea of the character, that is, of the opinion-
ated, captious old gentleman who is pedantic, not from
profession, but choice, belongs to Arbuthnot. Arbuthnot's
style is distinguished from that of his contemporaries
even by a greater degree of terseness and conciseness.
He leaves out every superfluous word, is sparing of con-
necting particles, and introductory phrases, uses always
the simplest forms of construction, and is more a master
of the idiomatic peculiarities and internal resources of the
language than almost any other writer. Tliere is a re-

On Oay, Swift, Young, &c. 139»

search in the choice of a plain, as well as of an orna-
njiented or learned style ; and, in fact, a great deal more.
Among common English words, there may be ten ex-
pressing the same thing with different degrees of force
and propriety, and only one of them the very word we-
want, because it is the only one that answers exactly
with the idea we have in our minds. Each word in
familiar use has a different set of associations and shades
of meaning attached to it, and distinguished from each
other by inveterate custom ; and it is in having the whole
of these at our command, and in knowing which to choose,,
as they are called for by the occasion, that the perfection
of a pure conversational prose-style consists. But in
writing a florid and artificial style, neither the same range
of invention, nor the same quick sense of propriety —
nothing but learning, is required. If you know the words
and their general meaning, it is sufficient : it is impossible
you should know the nicer inflections of signification,,
depending on an endless variety of application, in ex-
pressions borrowed from a foreign or dead language.
They all impose upon the ear alike, because they are not
familiar to it; the only distinction leffc is between the
pompous and the plain ; the sesquipedalia verba have this
advantage, that they are all of one length; and any
words are equally fit for a learned style, so that we have
never heard them before. Themistocles thought that th&
same sounding epithets could not suit all subjects, as the
same dress does not fit all persons. The style of our I
modem prose- writers is very fine in itself; but it wants
variety of inflection and adaptation : it hinders us from
seeing the differences of the things it undertakes to
describe. 1

What I have here insisted on will be found to be the <
leading distinction between the style of Swift, Arbuthnot, ^
Steele, and the other writers of the age of Queen Anne,
and the style of Dr. Johnson, which succeeded to it*

\

140 The English Poets.

The one is English, and the other is not. The writers
first mentioned, in order to express their thoughts, looked
about them for the properest word to convey any idea,
that the language which they spoke, and which their
countrymen understood, afforded : Dr. Johnson takes the
first English word that offers, and by translating it at a
venture into the first Greek or Latin word he can think
of, only retaining the EngHsh termination, produces an
extraordinary effect upon the reader by much the same
sort of mechanical process that Trim converted the old
jack-boots into a pair of new mortars.

Dr. Johnson was a lazy learned man, who liked to
think and talk, better than to read or write — ^who, how-
ever, wrote much and well, but too often by rote. His
long compound Latin phrases required less thought, and
took up more room than others. What shows the facilities
afforded by this style of imposing generalisation is, that
it was instantly adopted with success by all those who
were writers by profession, or who were not, and that at
present we cannot see a lottery puff or a quack advertise-
ment pasted against a wall that is not perfectly John-
sonian in style. Formerly, the learned had the privilege
of translating their notions into Latin; and a great
privilege it was, as it confined the reputation and emolu-
ments of learning to themselves. Dr. Johnson may be
said to have naturalised this privilege, by inventing a
sort of jargon translated half-way out of one language
into the other, which raised the Doctor's reputation, and
•confounded all ranks in literature.

In the short period above alluded to, authors professed
to write as other men spoke; everybody now affects to
^peak as authors write ; and any one who retains the use
of his m6ther tongue either in writing or conversation,
is looked upon as a very illiterate character.

Prior and Gray belong, in the characteristic excellences
•of their style, to the same class of writers with Suckling,

On Gay, Stoift, Ymng, dtc. 141

Eochester, and Sedley : the former imbibed most of tho'
lieentioaB levity of tke age of Cbarles II. and carried it
on beyond the Eevolution under King William. Prior
has left no single work equal to Gay's Fables or the
Beggar's Opera. But in his lyrical and fiigitive pieces he
has shown even more genius, more playfdness, more
mischievous gaiety. No one has exceeded him in the
laughing grace with which he glances at a subject that
wiU not bear examining, with which he gently hints at
what cannot be directly insisted on, with which he half
conceals, and half draws aside the veil from some of the
Musei^ nicest mysteries. His Muse is, in fact, a giddy
wanton flirt, who spends her time in playing at snap-
dragon and blind-man's buff, who tells what she should
not, and knows more than she tells. She laughs at the
tricks she shows us, and blushes, or would be thought to
do so, at what she kiBeps concealed. Prior has translated
several of Fontaine's Tales from the French ; and they
have lost nothing in the translation either of their wit
or malice. I need not name them : but the one I like the
most, is that of Cupid in Search of Venus's Doves. No
one could insinuate a knavish plot, a tender point, a loose
moral with such unconscious archness and careless
raillery, as if he gained new self-possession and adroit-
ness from the perplexity and confusion into which he
throws scrupulous imaginations, and knew how to seize
on all the ticklish parts of his subject, from their in-
voluntarily shrinking under his grasp. Some of his imi-
tations of Boileau's servile addresses to Louis XIY., which
he has applied with a happy mixture of wit and patriotic
enthusiasm to King William, or as he familiarly calls him, to

" Little Will, the scourge of France,
No Godhead, but the first of men,"

are excellent, and show the same talent for double-entendre
and the same gallantry of spirit, wither in the softer

142 The English Poets.

lyric or the more lively heroic. Some of Prior's hon mots
are the best that are recorded. His serions poetry, as his
Solomon, is as heavy as his familiar style was light and
agreeable. His moral Mnse is a Magdalen, and should
not have obtruded herself on public view. Henry and
Emma is a paraphrase of the old ballad of the Nut-brown
Maid, and not so good as the original. In short, as we
often see in other cases, where men . thwart their own
genius, Prior^s sentimental and romantic productions are
mere affectation, the result not of powerful impulse or
real feeling, but of a consciousness of his deficiencies, and
a wish to supply their place by labour and art.

Gray was sometimes grosser than Prior, not systematic-
ally, but inadvertently — from not being so well aware of
what he was about ; nor was there the same necessity for
caution, for his grossness is by no means so seductive or
inviting.

Gay's Fables are certainly a work of great merit, both
as to the quantity of invention implied, and as to the
elegance and facility of the execution. They are, how-
ever, spun out too long; the descriptions and narrative
are too diffuse and desultory ; and the moral is sometimes
without point. They are more like Tales than Fables.
The best are, perhaps, the Hare with Many Friends, the
Monkeys, and the Fox at the Point of Death. His
Pastorals are pleasing and poetical. But his capital
work is his Beggar's Opera. It is indeed a masterpiece
of wit and genius, not to say of morality. In composing
it, he chose a very unpromising ground to work upon,
and he has prided himself in adorning it with all the
graces, the precision, and brilliancy of style. It is a vulgar
error to call this a vulgar play. So far [is it] from it,
that I do not scruple to say that it appears to me one of
the most refined productions in the language. The
elegance of the composition is in exact proportion to the
coarseness of the materials : by " happy alchemy of mind,"

On (ray, Swift, Yovmg^ iScc, 143

the author has extracted an essence of refinement from
the dregs of human life, and turns its very dross into
gold. The scenes, characters, and incidents are, in them-
selves, of the lowest and most disgusting kind : hut, by
the sentiments and reflections wldch are put into the
mouths of highwaymen, turnkeys, their mistresses, wives
or daughters, he has converted this motley group into a
set of fine gentlemen and ladies, satirists and philosophers.
He has also effected this transformation without once
violating probability, or " o'erstepping the modesty of
nature." In fact, Gay* has turned the tables on the critics,
and by the assumed license of the mock-heroic style has
enabled himself to do justice to nature, that is, to give all
the force, truth, and locality of real feeling to the thoughts
and expressions, without being called to the bar of false
taste and affected delicacy. The extreme beauty and
feeling of the song, " Woman is like t])e fair flower in its
lustre," are only equalled by its characteristic propriety
and rmveU. Polly describes her lover going to the
gallows with the same touching simplicity, and with all
the natural fondness of a young girl in her circumstances,
who sees in his approaching catastrophe nothing but the
misfortunes and the personal accomplishments of the
object of her affections. "I see him sweeter than the
nosegay in his hand ; the admiring crowd lament that so
lovely a youth should come to an untimely end: even
butchers weep, and Jack Ketch refuses his fee rather than
consent to tie the fieital knot." The preservation of the
character and costume is complete. It has been said by
a great authority : " There is some soul of goodness in
things evil;" and the Beggar's Opera is a good-natured
but instructive comment on this text. The poet has
thrown all the gaiety and sunshine of the imagination, all
the intoxication of pleasure, and the vanity of despair,
round the short-lived existence of his heroes ; while
Peachum and Lockitt are seen in the background, parcel-

I

144 The JUnffli&h Pods.

ling out their months and woeks between them. The
general view exhibited of human life is of the most subtle
and abstracted kind. The author has with great felicity
brought out the good qualities and interesting emotions
almost inseparable from the lowest conditions ; and with
the same penetrating glance has detected the disguises
which rank and circumstances lend to exalted vice. Eyery
line in this sterling comedy sparkles with wit, and is
fraught with the keenest sarcasm. The very wit, however,
takes off from the offensiveness of the satire ; and I have
seen great statesmen, very great statesmen, heartily enjoy-
ing the jc^e, laughing most immoderately at the compli-
ments paid to them as not much worse than pickpockets
and cut-throats in a different line of life, and pleased, as
it were, to see themselves humanised by some sort of
fellowship with their kind. Indeed, it may be said that
the moral of the piece is to show the vtdgariiy of vice, or
that the same violations of integrity and decorum, the
same habitual sophistry in palliating their want of prin-
ciple, are common to the great and powerful with the
meanest and most contemptible of the species. What can
be more convincing than the argimients used by these
would-be politicians, to show that in hypocrisy, selfish-
ness, and treachery, they do not come up to many of their
betters? The exclamation of Mrs. Feachum^ when her
daughter marries Macheath, '* Hussy, hussy, you will be
as ill used, and as much neglected, as if you had married
a lord," is worth all Mrs. Hannah More's laboured invec*
tives on the laxity of the manners of high life !

I shall conclude this account of Gay with his verses on
Sir Bichard Blackmore, which may serve at once as a
specimen of his own manner, and as a character of a
voluminous contemporary poet, who was admired by Mr.
Locke, and knighted by King William III. :

" See who ne'er was nor will be half-read.
Who first sung Arthur, then «ung Alfred ;

On Oaify Swifty Young, &e. 145

Praised great Eliza in God's anger,

Till all true Englishmen cried, " Hang her !"—

Manl'd hnman wit in one thick satire ;

Next in three books spoil'd human nature :

Undid Creation at a jerk,

And of Bedemption made damn'd work.

Then took his Muse at once, and dipt her

Full in the middle of the Scripture :

What wonders there the man, grown old, did ?

Sternhold himself he out-Sternholded.

Made David seem so mad and freakish,

All thought him just what thought King Achish.

No mortal read his Solomon

But judg'd Be'boam his own son.

Moses he serv'd as Moses Pharaoh,

And Deborah as she Siserah ;

Made Jeremy full sore to cry,

And Job himse^* curse God and die. ,

What punishment all this must follow ?

Shall Arthur use him like King ToUo ?

Shall David as Uriah slay him ?

Or dextrous Deborah Siserah him ?

No ! none of these t Heaven spare his life !

But send him, honest Job, thy wife !'* .

Gkiy's Trivia, or Art of Walking the Streets, is as pleasant
as walking the streets most have been at the time when it
was written. His ballad of Black-eyed Susan is one of
the most delightful that can be imagined ; nor do I sec
that it is a bit the worse for Mr. Jekyll's parody on it.

Swift's reputation as a poet has been in a manner ob-
scured by the greater splendour, by the natural force and
inventive genius of his prose writings ; but if he had never
written either the Tale of a Tub or Gulliver's Travels, his
name merely as a poet would have come down to us, and
have gone down to posterity with well-earned honours.
His Imitations of Horace, and stiU more his Verses on his
own Death, place him in the first rank of agreeable moral-
ists in verse. There is not only a dry humour, an exquisite
tone of irony, in these productions of his pen ; but there
is a touching, unpretending pathos, mixed up with the

146 The English Poets.

most whimsical and eccentric strokes of pleasantry and
satire. His Description of the Morning in London, and
of a City Shower, which were first published in the Tatler,
ore among the most delightful of the contents of that very
Hclightful work. Swift shone as one of the most sensible
(of the poets ; he is also distinguished as one of the most
nonsensical of them. No man has written so many lack-
a-daisical, slip-shod, tedious, trifling, foolish, fantastical
verses as he, which are so little an imputation on the
wisdom of the writer, and which in fact only show his
readiness to oblige others, and to forget himself. He
has gone so &r as to invent a new stanza of fourteen and
sixteen syllable lines for Mary the cookmaid to vent her
budget of nothings, and for Mrs. Harris to gossip with
^ the deaf old housekeeper. Oh, when shall we have such
another Kector of Laracor ! The Tale of a Tub is one of
the most masterly compositions in the language, whether
for thought, wit, or style. It is so capital and undeniable
a proof of the author's talents, that Dr. Johnson, who did
not like Swift, would not allow that he wrote it. It is
hard that the same performance should stand in the way of
a man's promotion to a bishopric, as wanting gravity, and
at the same time be denied to be his, as having too much
wit. It is a pity the Doctor did not find out some graver
author, for whom he felt a critical kindness, on whom to
father this splendid but unacknowledged production. Dr.
Johnson could not deny that Gulliver's Travels were his ;
he therefore disputed their merits, and said that after the
first idea of them was conceived, they were easy to execute ;
all the rest followed mechanically. I do not know how
that may be ; but the mechanism employed is something
vpry different from any that the author of Easselas was in
the habit of bringing to bear on such occasions. There is
nothing more futile, as well as invidious, than this mode

rof criticising a work of original genius. Its greatest merit
is supposed to be in the invention; and you say very

On Swift, Young, dto. 147

wisely, that it is not in the execution. You might as well
take away the merit of the invention of the telescope by
saying that, after its uses were explained and understood,
any ordinary eyesight could look through it. Whether
the excellence of Gulliver's Travels is in tibe conception or
the execution, is of little consequence ; the power is some-
where, and it is a power that has moved the world. The
power is not that of big words and vaunting common-
places. Swiffc left these to those who wanted them, and
has done what his acuteness and intensity of mind alone
could enable any one to conceive or to perform. His object » ^
was to strip empty pride and grandeur of the imposing air
which external circumstances throw around "fhem-'ancl
fur ^is purpose he has cheated the imagination of the
illusions which the prejudices of sense and of the world
put upon it, by reducing everything to the abstract pre-
dicament of size. He enlarges or diminishes the scale, as/
he wishes to show the insigni£cuice or the grossness of
our overweening seK-love. That he has done this with
mathematical precision, with complete presence of mind
and perfect keeping, in a manner that comes equally home
to the understanding of the man and of the child, does not
take away from the merit of the work or the genius of the
author. He has taken a new view of human nature, such
as a being of a higher sphere might take of it ; he has
torn the scales from off his moral vision ; he has tried an
experiment upon human life, and sifted its pretensions
from the alloy of circumstances ; he has measured it with
a rule, has weighed it in a balance, and found it, for the
most part, wanting and worthless — in substance and in
show. Nothing solid, nothing valuable is left in his sys-
tem but virtue and wisdom. What a libel is this upon
mankind! What a convincing proof of misanthropy!
What presumption and what malice prej^ense, to show men
what they are, and to teach them what they ought to be !
What a mortifying stroke aimed at national glory is that

148 The Bnglish Poets.

unlucky incident of Gulliver's wading across the channel
and carrying off the whole fleet of Blefnscu! After that,
we have only to consider which of the contending parties
was in the right. What a shock to personal vanity is
given in the account of Gulliver's nurse, GlumdalcJ^tch !
Still, notwithstanding the disparagement to her personal
charms, her good nature remains the same amiable quality
as before. I cannot see the harm, the misanthropy, the
immoral and degrading tendency of this. The moral
lesson is as fine as the intellectual exhibition is amusing.
It is an attempt to tear off the mask of imposture from the
world ; and nothing but imposture has a right to complain
of it. It is,* indeed, the way with our quacks in morality
to preach up the dignity of human nature, to pamper pride
and hypocrisy with the idle mockeries of the virtues they
pretend to, and which they have not ; but it was not Swift's
way to cant morality or anything else ; nor did his genius
prompt him to write unmeaning panegyrics on mankind !

I do not, therefore, agree with the estimate of Swift's
nioi-al or intellectual character given by an eminent critic,
who does not seem to have forgotten the party politics of
Swift. I do not carry my political resentments so far
back : I can at this time of day forgive Swift for being a
Tory. I feel little disturbance (whatever I might think
of them) at his political sentiments which died with him,
considering how much else he has left behind him of a more
solid and imperishable nature ! If he had, indeed (like some
others), merely left behind him the lasting infamy of a de-
stroyer of his country, or the shining example of an apostate
from liberty, I might have thought the case altered.
The determination with which Swift persisted in a pre-
, concerted theory savoured of the morbid affection of which
' he died. There is nothing more likely to drive a man
I mad than the being unable to get rid of the idea of the
\ distinction between right and wrong, and an obstinate,
• constitutional preference of the true to the agreeable.

On Smft, Young, dke. 149

Swift was not a Frenchman. In this respect he differed
from Babelais and Voltaire. They have been accounted
the three greatest wits in modem times; but their wit
was of a peculiar kind in each. They are little beholden
to each other ; there is some resemblance between Lord
Peter in the Tale of a Tub and Babelais' Friar John ; but

, in general they are all three authors of a substantive char-
acter in themselves. Swift's wit (particularly in his chief
prose works) was serious, saturnine, and practical ; Babe-
lais' was fantastical and joyous; Voltaire's was light,
sportive, and verbal. Swift's wit was the wit of sense ;
Babelais', the wit of nonsense ; Voltaire's, of indifference
to both. The ludicrous in Swift arises out of his keen
sense of impropriety, his soreness and impatience of the
least absurdity. He separates with a severe atid caustic
air truth from falsehood, folly from wisdom, " shows vice
her own image, scorn her own feature ;" and it is the force^
the precision, and the honest abruptness with which the
separation is made, that excites our surprise, our admira-

' tion, and laughter. He sets a mark of reprobation on that
which offends good sense and good manners, which cannot
be mistaken, and which holds it up to our ridicule and
contempt ever after. His occasional disposition to trifling
(already noticed) was a relaxation from the excessive ear-
nestness of his mind. Indignatio facit versus. His better
genius was hia spleen. It was the biting acrimony of his
temper that sharpened his other faculties. The truth of
his perceptions produced the pointed coruscations of his
wit ; his playful irony was the result of inward bitterness
of thought ; his imagination was the product of the literal,
dry, incorrigible tenaciousness of his understanding. He
endeavoured to escape from the persecution of realities
into the regions of fancy, and invented his Liliputians
and Brobdignagians, Yahoos and Houynhyms, as a diver-
fiion to the more painful knowledge of the world around
him : they only made him laugh, while men and women

* ^'

150 The English Poets.

made him angry. His feverish impatience made him view
the infirmities of that great baby, the world, with the same
scrutinising glance and jealons irritability that a parent
regards the failings of its ofiEspring ; but, as Bousseau has
well observed, parents have not on this account been sup-
posed to have more affection for other people's children
than their own. In other respects, and except from the
sparkling effervescence of his gall, Swift's brain was as
^' dry as the remainder biscuit after a voyage." He hated
absurdity : Babelais loved it, exaggerated it with supreme
satisfaction, luxuriated in its endless varieties, rioted in
nonsense, " reigned there and revelled." He dwelt on the
absurd and ridiculous for the pleasure they gave him, not
for the pain. He lived upon laughter, and ^ed laughing.
He indulged his vein, and took his full swing of folly.
He did not baulk his fancy or his readers. His wit was to
him " as riches fineless ;" he saw no end of his wealth in
tliat way, and set no limits to his extravagance : he was
eommunicative, prodigal, boundless, and inexhaustible.
Sis were the Saturnalia of wit, the riches and the royalty,
'He health and long life. He is intoxicated with gaiety,
5)«Ld with folly. His animal spirits drown him in a flood
Af mirth : his blood courses up and down his veins like
wine. His thirst of enjoyment is as great as his thirst of
4rink : his appetite for good things of all sorts is unsatis-
fied, and there is a never-ending supply. Discourse is dry ;
so they moisten their words in their cups, and relish their
dry jests with plenty of Botargos and dried neats' tongues.
It is like Camacho's wedding in Don Quixote, where Sancho
ladled out whole pullets and fat geese from the soup-
kettles at a pull. The flagons are set * a running, their
tongues wag at the same time, and their mirth flows as a
river. How Friar John roars and lays about him in the
vineyard I How Panurge whines in the storm, and how
dexterously he contrives to throw the sheep overboard ?

* Orig., edit, has setting. — ^Ed

On Swift, Youngy &c, 151

How much Pantagmel behaves like a wise king ! How
Gargantua mewls, and pules, and slabbers his nurse, and
demeans himself most like a royal infant I what provinces
he devours I what seas he drinks up ! How he eats, drinks,
and sleeps — sleeps, eats, and drinks ! The style of Babe-
lais is no less prodigious than his matter. His words are
of marrow — unctuous, dropping fatness. He was a mad
wag, the king of good fellows, and prince of practical
philosophers !

Babelais was a Frenchman of the old school, Voltaire
of the new. The wit of the one arose from an exuberance
of enjoyment, of the other, from an excess of indifference,
real or assumed. Voltaire had no enthusiasm for one thing
or another : he made light of everything. In his hands
all things turn to chaff and dross, as the pieces of silver
money in the Arabian Nights were changed by the hands
of the enchanter into little dry crumbling leaves I He is
a Parisian. He never exaggerates, is never violent : he
treats things with the most provoking sang froid^ and ex-
presses his contempt by the most indirect' hints and in
the fewest words, as if he hardly thought them worth even
his contempt. He retains complete possession of himself
and of his subject. He does not effect his purpose by tho
eagerness of his blows, but, by the delicacy of his tact.
The poisoned wound he inflicted was so fine, as scarcely
to be felt till it rankled and festered in its " mortal conse-
quences." His callousness was an excellent foil for the
antagonists he had mostly to deal with. He took knaves
and fools on his shield well. He stole away its cloak
from grave imposture. If he reduced other things below
their true value, making them seem worthless and hollow,
he did not degrade the pretensions of tyranny and super-
stition below their true value, by making them seem utterly
worthless and hollow, as contemptible as they were odious.
This was the service he rendered to truth and mankind !
His Candide is a masterpiece of wit. It has been called

152 The English Pods.

" the doll product of a scofiGar's pen." It is, indeed, " the
product of a scoffer's pen;" but after reading the Excursion,
few people will think it duU, It is in the most perfect
keeping, and without any appearance of effort. Every
sentence tells, and the whole reads like one sentence.
There is something sublime in Martin's sceptical indif-
ference to moral good and evil. It is the repose of the
grave. It is better to suffer this living death, than a living
martyrdom. '' Nothing can touch him further." The
moral of Candide (such as it is) is the same as that of
Easselas : the execution is different. Voltaire says, " A
great book is a great eviL" Dr. Johnson would have
laboured this short apophthegm into a voluminous com-
monplace. Voltaire's traveller (in another worL^ being
asked " whether he likes black or white mutton best," re-
plies that " he is indifferent, provided it is tender." Dr.
Johnson did not get at a conclusion by so short a way as
this. If Voltaire's licentiousness is objected to me, I say,
let it be placed to its true account, the manners of the age
and court in which he lived. The lords and ladies of the
bedchamber in the reign of Louis XV. found no fault with
the immoral tendency of his writings. Why then should
our modem purists quarrel with them ? But to return.

Young is a gloomy epigrammatist. He has abused great
powers both of thought and language. His moral reflec-
tions are sometimes excellent ; but he spoils their beauty
by overloading them with a religious horror, and at the
same time giving them all the smart turns and quaint
expression of an enigma or repartee in verse. The well-
known lines on Procrastination are in his best manner :

" Be wise to-day ; 'tis madness to defer r '
Next day the fatal precedent will plead ;
Thus on, till wisdom is pnsh'd out of life.
Procrastination is the thief of time ;
Year after year it steals, till all are fled.
And to the mercies of a moment leaves
The vast concerns of an eternal scene.

On Young. 153

Of man's miraculous mistakes, this bears
The pahn, *^ That all men are about to Uve,"
For ever on the brink of being bom.
All pay themselves the compliment to think
They, one day, shall not drivel ; and their pride
On this reversion takes up ready praise ;
At least, their own ; their future selves applauds ;
How excellent that life they ne'er will lead !
Time lodg'd in their own hands in Folly's vails :
That lodg'd in Fate's, to Wisdom they consign ;
The thing they can't but purpose, they }y)stpone.
'Tis not in Folly, not to scorn a fool ;
And scarce in human Wisdom to do more.
All Promise is poor dilatory man,
And that through every stage. When young, indeed,
In fall content we sometimes nobly rest,
Un-anxious for ourselves ; and only wish.
As duteous sons, our fathers were more wise.
At thirty man suspects himself a fool ;
I^ows it at forty, and reforms his plan ;
At fifty chides his infamous delay.
Pushes his prudent purpose to Besolve ;
In all the magnanimity of thought
Besolves, and re-resolves ; then dies the same.

And why ? Because he thinks himself immortal.
All men think all men mortal, but themselves :
Themselves, when some alarming shock of fate
Strikes through their wounded hearts the sudden dread ;
But their hearts wounded, like the wounded air.
Soon close ; where passed the shaft, no trace is found.
As from the wing no scar the sky retains ;
The parted wave no furrow from the keel ;
So dies in human hearts the thought of death.
EVn with the tender tear which nature sheds
O'er those we love ; we drop it in their grave."

His Universal Passion is a keen and powerful satire, but
the effort takes from the effect, and oppresses attention
by perpetual and violent demands upon it. His tragedy
of the Bevenge is monkisli and scholastic. Zanga is a
vulgar caricature of lago. The finest lines in it are the
burst of triumph at the end, when his revenge is com-
pleted :

154 The English Pods.

** Let Europe and her pallid sons go weep,
Let Afric on her hundred thrones rejoice/' &c.

CoUins is a writer of a very different stamp, who had
perhaps less general power of mind than Young ; but he
had that true vivida vis, that genuine inspiration, which
alone can give birth to the highest efforts of poetry. He
leaves stings in the minds of his readers, certain traces of
thought and feelings which never wear out, because nature
had left them in his own mind. He is the only one of the
minor poets of whom, if he had lived, it cannot be said
that he might not have done the greatest things. The
germ is there. He is sometimes affected, unmeaning, and
obscure ; but he also catches rich glimpses of the bowers
of Paradise, and has lofty aspirations after the highest
seats of the Muses. With a great deal of tinsel and splen-
did patchwork, he has not been able to hide the solid
sterling ore of genius. In his best works there is an attic
simplicity, a pathos, and fervour of imagination, which
make us the more lament that the efforts of his mind were
at first depressed by neglect and pecuniary embarrassment,
and at length buried in the gloom of an unconquerable
and fatal malady. How many poets have gone through
all the horrors of poverty and contempt, and ended their
days in moping melancholy or moody madness !

" We poets in our youth begin in gladness,
But thereof comes in the end despondency and madness.*'

Is this the fault of themselves, of nature in temperitig
them of too fine a clay, or of the world, that spumer of
living, and patron of dead merit ? Bead the account of
Oollins : with hopes frustrated, with faculties blighted — at
last, when it was too late for himself or others, receiving
the deceitful favours of relenting Fortune, which served
only to throw their sunshine on his decay, and to light
him to an early grave. He was found sitting with every
spark of imagination extinguished, and with only the faint

On CoUins. 155

traces of memory and reason left — with only one book in
his room, the Bible ; " but that," he said, " was the best."
A melancholy damp hung like an unwholesome mildew
upon his faculties : a canker had consumed the flower of
his life. He produced works of genius, and the public
regarded them with scorn: he aimed at excellence that
should be his own, and his friends treated his efforts as
the wanderings of fatuity. The proofs of his capacity
are, his Ode on Evening, his Ode on the Passions (par-
ticularly the fine personification of Hope), his Ode to Fear,
the [so called] Dirge in Cymbeline, the Lines on Thomson's
Grave, and his Eclogues, parts of which are admirable.
But perhaps his Ode on the Poetical Character is the
best of all. A rich distilled perfume emanates from it
like the breath of genius ; a golden cloud envelops it ; a
honeyed paste of poetic diction encrusts it, like the can-
died coat of the auricula. His Ode to Evening shows
equal genius in the images and versification. The sounds
steal slowly over the ear, like the gradual coming on of
evening itseK:

" If aught of oaten stop or pastoral song
May hope, chaste Eve, to soothe thy modest ear,
Like thy own solemn springs,
Thy springs and dying gales,

O nymph reserved, while now the bright-haired sun
Sits on yon western tent, whose cloudy skirts

With brede ethereal wove,

0*erhang his wavy bed :

Now air is hush'd, save where the weak-ey*d bat
With short shrill shriek flits by on leathern wing.

Or where the beetle winds

His small but sullen horn,

As oft he rises midst the twilight path,
Against the pilgrim borne in heedless hum.

Kow teach me, maid composed,

To breathe some soften'd strain,

156 Ths English Pods.

Whose numbers stealing through thy darkling vale
May not unseemly with its stillness suit,

As musing slow, I hail

Thy genial, lov'd return !

For when thy folding star arising shows
His paly circlet, at his warning lamp

The fragrant Hours and Elves

Who slept in flow'rs the day,

And many a nymph who wreathes her brows with sedge,
And sheds the freshening dew, and lovelier still,

The pensive Pleasures sweet

Prepare thy shadowy car ;

Then lead, calm Votress, where some sheety lake
Cheers the lone heath, or some time-hallow'd pile,

Or upland fallows grey

Beflect its last cool gleam.

But when chill blustering winds, or driving rain
Forbid my willing feet, be mine the hut,

That from the mountain's side

Views wilds and swelling floods,

And hamlets brown, and dim-discovered spires,
And hears their simple bell, and mark^o'er all

The dewy fingers draw

The gradual dusky veil.

While Spring shall pour his show'rs, as oft he wont,
And bathe thy breathing tresses, meekest Eve I

While Summer loves to sport

Beneath thy lingering light ;

While sallow Autumn fills thy lap with leaves ;
Or Winter yelling through the troublous air,

Affrights thy shrinking train

And rudely rends thy robes ;

So long, sure-found beneath the sylvan shed,

Shall Fancy, Friendship, Science, rose-lipp'd Heolth,

Thy gentle influence own,

And hymn thy favourite name."

Hammond, whose poems are botmd up with CoUins's,
in Bell's pocket edition, was a young gentleman, who

On Harnmondy Orat/y de. 157

appears to have fallen in Iotb abont the year 1740, and
who translated Tibullns into English yerse, to let his
mistress and the public know of it.

I should conoeiye that Collins ha4 a much greater
poetical genius than Gray : he had more of that fine
madness which is inseparable from it, of its turbid effer-
vescence, of all that pushes it to the' verge of agony or
raptujre. Gray's Pindaric Odes are, I believe, generally
given up at present : they are stately and pedanj^u^i aMnd
of methodical borrowed phrenzy. But I cannot so easily
give up, nor "wiIOEe^ world be in any haste to part with
his Elegy in a Oountry Churchyard : it is one of the
most classical productions that ever was penned by a re-
fined and thoughtful mind, moralising on human life.
Mr. Coleridge (in his Literary Life) says that his friend
Mr. Wordsworth had undertaken to show that the language
of the Elegy is unintelligible: it has, however, been
understood 1 The Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton
College is. more nitechanical and commonplace; but it
touches on certain strings about the heart, that vibrate
in unison with it to our latest breath. No one ever passes
by Windsor's " stately heights," or sees the distant spires
of Eton College below, without thinking of Gray. He
deserves that we should think of him ; for he thought of
others, and turned a trembling^£ver-watchful ear to " the
still sad music of humanity." His Letters are inimitably
fine. If his poems are sometimes finical and pedantic,
his prose is quite free from affectation. He pours his
thonghte out upon paper as they arise in hia mind; and
they arise in his mind without pretence or constraint,
from the pure impulse of learned leisure and contempla-
tive indolence. He is not here on stilts ox in buckram,
but smiles in his easy chair, as he moralises through the
loopholes ofTetreat, on the bustle and raree-show of the
world, or on "those reverend bedlams, colleges and
schools!" He had nothing to do but to read and to

158 The English Poets.

think, and to tell his friends what he read and thought.
His life was a luxurious, thoughtful dream. '' Be mine,"
he says in one of his Letters, ''to read eternal new
romances of Marivaux and Crebillon." And in another,
to show his contempt for action and the turmoils of
ambition, he says to some one, ''Don't you remember

Lords and , who are now great statesmen, little

dirty boys playing at cricket ? For my part, I do not
feel a bit wiser, or bigger, or older than I did then."
What an equivalent for not being wise or great, to be
always young ! What a happiness never to lose or gain
anything in the game of human life, by being never any-
thing more than a looker-on !

How different from Shenstone, who only wanted to be
looked at — who withdrew from the world to be followed
by the crowd, and courted popularity by affecting privacy I
His Letters show him to have lived in a continual fever of
petty vanity, and to have been a finished literary coquet.
He seems always to say, " You will find nothing in the
world so amiable as Nature and me : come, and admire
us." His poems are indifferent and tasteless, except his
Pastoral Ballad, his Lines on Jenmiy Dawson, and his
Schoolmistress, which last is a perfect piece of writing.

Akenside had in him the materials of poetry, but he
was hardly a great XH>et. He improved his Pleasures of
the Lnagination in the subsequent editions, by pruning
away a great many redundances of style and ornament.
Armstrong is better, though he has not chosen a veiy
exhilarating subject — The Art of Preserving Health.
Churchill's Satires on the Scotch, and Characters of the
Players, are as good as the subjects deserved — they are
strong, coarse, and full of an air of hardened assurance.
I ought not to pass over without mention Green's Poem
on the Spleen,* or Dyer's Grongar Hill.

The principal name of the period we are now come to

* « The Spleen," by Matthew Green, 1796. 8vo.— Ed.

On GoldsmUh, 159

is that of Goldsmith, than which few names stand higher
or fairer in the iCnnals of modern literature. One should
have his own pen to describe him as he onght to be ^^
described: amiable, various, and bland, with careless in- y^"^-
imitable grace touching on every kind of excellence: ^»
with manners unstudied, but a gentle heart : performing
miracles of skill from pure happiness of nature, and whose
greatest fault was ignorance of his own worth. As a poet,
he is the most flowing and elegant of our versifiers since
Pope, with traits of artless nature which Pope had not,
and with a peculiar felicity in his turns upon words,
which he constantly repeated with delightful effect, such
as:

" His lot, though small,

He sees that little lot, the lot of aU."

'r ^P ^P "P ^P ^P

" And tum'd and look'd, and tum'd to look again."

As a novelist, his Vicar of Wakefield has charmed all
Europe. What reader is there in the civilised world who
is not the better for the story of the washes which the
worthy Dr. Primrose demolished so deliberately with the
poker — for the knowledge of the guinea which the Miss
Primroses kept unchanged in their pockets — the adven-
ture of the picture of the Vicar's family, which could not
be got into the house — and that of the Flamborough family,
all painted with oranges in their hands — or for the story
of the case of shagreen spectacles and the cosmogony ?

As a comic writer, his Tony Lumpkin draws forth new
powers from Mr. Listen's face. That alone is praise
enough for it, Poor Goldsmith I how happy he has made
others ! how unhappy he was in himself ! He never had
the pleasure of reading his own works ! He had only the
satisfaction of good-naturedly relieving the necessities of
others, and the consolation of being harassed to death
with his own ! He is the most amusing and interesting
person in one of the most amusing and interesting books

Jt.

160 The English Poeii.

in the world, BoBwell*s Life of Johnson. His peach-
coloured coat shall always bloom in Boswell's writings,
and his fame snryive in his own I His genins was a mix-
ture of originality and imitation: he conld do nothing
without some model before him, and he could copy nothing
that he did not adorn with the graces of his own mind.
Almost fdl the latter part of the Vicar of Wakefield, and
a great deal of the former, is taken from Joseph Andrews ;
but the circumstances I have mentioned above are not.

The finest things he has left behind him in verse are
his character of a country schoolmaster, and that pro-
phetic description of Burke in the Betaliation. His
moral Essays in the Citizen of the World are as agree-
able chit-chat as can be conveyed in the form of didactic
discourses.

Warton was a poet and a scholar, studious with ease,

learned without affectation. He had a happiness which

some have been prouder of than he, who deserved it less —

he was poet-laureate :

''And that green wreath which decks the bard when dead,
That laurel garland crown'd his living head."

But he bore his honours meekly, and performed his half-
yearly task regularly. I should not have mentioned him
for this distinction alone (the highest which a poet can
receive from the state), but for another circumstance : I
mean his being the author of some of the finest sonnets in
the language— at least so they appear to me ; and as this
species of composition has the necessary advantage of being
short (though it is also sometimes both ''tedious and
brief"), I will here repeat two or three of them, as treating
pleasing subjects in a pleasing and philosophical way :

Written in a blank leaf of BugdaWs Monasticon.

" Deem not, devoid of elegance, the sage,
By Fancy^s genuine feelings unbeguil'd,
Of painful pedantry the poring child ;
Who turns of these proud domes the historic page.

On Swrfty Young, Gray, &c. 161

Now sunk by Time, and Henry's fiercer rage/^ ,.
Think'st thdli the warbling Muses never smil'd '■
On his lone hours? Ingenuous views engage
His thoughts, on themes unclassic falsely sty I'd,
Intent. While cloister'd piety displays -
Her mouldering roll, the piercing eye explores •
New manners, and the pomp of elder days,
Whence culls the pensive bard his pictur'd stores.
Not rough nor barren are the winding ways *
Of hoar Antiquity, but strewn with flowers/*

Sonnet, Written at Stonehenge,

** Thou noblest monument of Albion's isle.
Whether, by Merlin's aid, from Scythia's shore
To Amber's fatal plain Pendragon bore.
Huge frame of giant hands, the mighty pile,
T' entomb his Britons slain by Hengist's g^ilo :
Or Druid priests, spi inkled with human gore.
Taught *mid thy massy maze their mystic lor© :
Or Danish chiefs, enrich'd with savage spoil,
To victory's idol vast, an unhewn shrine,
Rear'd the rude heap, or in thy hallow'd ground
Repose the kings of Brutus' genuine line ;
Or here those kings in solemn state were crown'd ;
Studious to trace thy wondrous origin,
We muse on many an ancient tale renown'd."

Nothing can be more admirable than the learning here
displayed, or the inference from it, that it is of no use but
as it leads to interesting thought and reflection.

That written after seeing Wilton House is in the same
style, but I prefer concluding with that to the river Lodon,
which has a personal as well as poetical interest about it :

" Ah ! what a weary race my feet have run.
Since first I trod thy banks with alders crown'd.
And thought my way was all through fairy ground.
Beneath the azure sky and golden sun :
When first my Aluse to lisp her notes begun,
Wiiile pensive memory traces back the lound
Wliioh fills the varied interval between ;
Much pleasure, more of sorrow, marks the scene.^

M

162 The English Poets.

Sweet native stream I those skies and suns so pme

No more return, to cheer my evening road!

Yet still one joy remains, that not obscure

Nor useless, all my vacant days have flow'd

From youth's gay dawn to manhood's prime mature.

Nor with the Muse's laurel unbestow'd."

I have thus gone through all the names of this period I
could think of, but I find that there are others still waiting
behind that I had never thought of. Here is a list of
some of them — Pattison, Tickell, Hill, Somerville, Browne,
Pitt, Wilkie, Dodsley, Shaw, Smart, Langhome, Bruce,
Greame, Glover, Lovibond, Penrose, Mickle, Jago, Scott,
"Whitehead, Jenyns, Logan, Cotton, Cunningham, and
Blacklock. — I think it will be best to let them pass and
say nothing about them. It will be hard to persuade so
many respectable persons that they are dull writers, and
if we give them any praise, they will send others.

But here comes one whose claims cannot be so easily
set aside : they have been sanctioned by learning, haUed
by genius, and hallowed by misfortune — I mean Chatterton.
Yet I must say what I think of him, and that is not what
is generally thought. I pass over the disputes between
the learned antiquaries. Dr. Milles, Herbert Croft, and
Dr. Knox, whether he was to bo placed after Shakspeare
and Dryden, or to come after Shakspeare alone. A living
poet has borne a better testimony to him :

** I thought of Chatterton, the marvellous boy.
The sleepless soul that perished in his pride
And him * who walked in glory and in joy
Beside his plough along the moimtain side."

I am loth to put asunder whom so great an authority has
joined together ; but I cannot find in Chatterton's works
anything so extraordinary as the age at which they were
written. They have a facility, vigour, and knowledge,

* Bums. — These lines are taken from the introduction to Mr.
Wordsworth's poem of the LiEech-gatueseb.

On Chatterton, 163

wbicli were prodigious in a boy of sixteen, but which would
not have been so in a man of twenty. He did not show ex-
traordinary powers of genius, but extraordinary precocity.
Nor do I believe he would have written better, had he
lived. He knew this himself, or he would have lived.
Great geniuses, like great kings, have too much to think
of to kill themselves ; for their mind to them also " a
kingdom is." With an unaccountable power coming over
him at an unusual age, and with the youthful confidence
it inspired, he performed wonders, and was v/illing to set
a seal on his reputation by a tragic catastrophe. He
had done his best; and, like another Empedocles, threw
himseK into ^tna, to ensure immortality. The brazen
slippers alone remain!

( 164 )

LECTUEE Vn.

OHATTEBTON (continued). — ON BURNS, AND THE OLD ENGLISH

BALLADS.

I AM sorry that what I said in the conclusion of the last
Lecture respecting Chatterton, should have given dis-
satisfaction to some persons, with whom I would willingly
agree on all such matters. What I meant was less to call
in question Chatterton' s genius, than to object to the
common mode of estimating its magnitude by its prema*
tureness. The lists of fame are not filled with the dates
of births or deaths ; and the side-mark of the age at which
they were done, wears out in works destined for immor-
tality. Had Chatterton really done more, we should have
thought less of him, for our attention would then have
been fixed on the excellence of the works themselves,
instead of the singularity of the circumstances in which
they were produced. But because he attained to the full
powers of manhood at an early age, I do not see that he
would have attained to more than those powers, had he
lived to be a man. He was a prodigy, because in him the
ordinary march of nature was violently precipitated ; and
it is therefore inferred, that he would have continued to
hold on his course, "unslacked of motion." On the
contrary, who knows but he might have lived to be poet^
laureate ? It is much better to let him remain as he was.
Of his actual productions, any one may think as highly as
he pleases; I would only guard against adding to the
account of his quantum meruit, those possible productions
by which the learned rhapsodists of his time raised hia
gigantic pretensions to an equality with those of Homer
and Shakspcare. It is ^musin^; to read some of thcsQ

On Chatterion. 165

exaggerated descriptions, eacli rising above the other in
extravagance. In Anderson's Life, we find that Mr. Warton
speaks of him " as a prodigy of genius," as " a singular
instance of prematurity of abilities:" that may be true
enough, and Warton was at any rate a competent judge ;
but Mr. Malone " believes him to have been the greatest
genius that England has produced since the days of
Shakspeare." Dr. Gregory says " he must rank, as a uni-
versal genius, above Dryden, and perhaps only second to
Shakspeare." Mr. Herbert Croft is still more unqualified
in his praises ; he asserts, that " no such being, at any
period of life, has ever been known, or possibly ever will
be known." He runs a parallel between Chatterton and
Milton ; and asserts, that '' an army of Macedonian and
Swedish mad butchers fly before him;" meaning, I suppose,
that Alexander the Great and Charles the Twelfth .were
nothing to him ; " nor," he adds, "does my memory supply
me mth any human being, who at such an age, with such
advantages, has produced such compositions. Under the
heathen mythology, superstition and admiration WQuld
have explained all, by bringing Apollo on earth; nor
would the God ever have descended with more credit to
himself." Chatterton's physiognomy would at least have
enabled him to pass incognito. It is quite different from
the look of timid wonder and delight with which Annibal
Caracci has painted a young Apollo listening to the first
sounds he draws from a Pan's pipe under the tutelage of
the old Silenus 1 If Mr. Croft is sublime on the occasion,
Dr. Knox is no less pathetic. "The testimony of Dr.
Knox," says Dr. Anderson,* "does equal credit to the
classical taste and amiable benevolence of the writer, and
the genius and reputation of Chatterton." " When I read,"
says the Doctor, " the researches of those learned anti-
quaries who have endeavoured to prove that the poems
attributed to Eowley were really written by him, I observe

♦ Essays, p. 144.

166 The EnffUsh Poets.

many ingenious remarks in confirmation of their opinion^
which it would be tedious, if not difficult, to controvert/*

Now this is so far from the mark, that the whole con*
troversy might have been settled by any one but the
learned antiqiiaries themselves, who had the smallest share
of their learning, from this single circumstance, that the
poems read as smooth as any modem poems, if you read
them as modem compositions ; and that you C£uinot read
them, or make verse of them at all, if you pronounce or
accent the words as they were spoken at the time when
the poems were pretended to have been written. The whole
secret of the imposture, which nothing but a deal of learned
dust, raised by collecting and removing a great deal of
learned rubbish, could have prevented our laborious critics
from seeing through, lies on the face of it (to say nothing
of the burlesque air which is scarcely disguised throughout)
in the repetition of a few obsolete words, and in the mis-
spelling of common ones.

" No sooner," proceeds the Doctor, " do I turn to the
poems, than the labour of the antiquaries appears only
waste of time ; and I am involuntarily forced to join in
placing that laurel, which he seems so well to have
deserved, on the brow of Chatterton. The poems bear so
many marks of superior genius, that they have deservedly
excited the general attention of polite scholars, and are
considered as the most remarkable productions in modern
poetry. We have many instances of poetical eminence at
an early age ; but neither Cowley, Milton, nor Pope ever
produced anything while they were boys which can justly
be compared to the poems df Chatterton. The learned
antiquaries do not indeed dispute their excellence. They
extol it in the highest terms of applause. They raise their
favourite Eowley to a rivalry with Homer : but they make
the very merits of the works an argument against their
real author. Is it possible, say they, that a boy shoul4
produce compositions so beautiful and masterly ? That a

On ChaUerton. 167

oommon boy should produce them is not possible," rejoiim
the Doctor ; " but that they should be produced by a boy
of an extraordinary genius, such as was that of Homer or.'
Shakspeare, though a prodigy, is such a one as by no means
exceeds the bounds of rational credibility."

Now it does not appear that Shakspeare or Homer were
such early prodigies ; so that by this reasoning ho must
take precedence of them too, as well as of Milton, Cowley,
and Pope. The reverend and classical writer then breaks
out into the following melancholy raptures :

" Unfortunate boy I short and evil were thy days, but
thy fame shall be immortal. Hadst thou been known to
the munificent patrons of genius ......

^ Unfortunate boy I poorly wast thou accommodated
during thy short sojourning here among us ; rudely wast
tliou treated ; sorely did thy feelings sufier from the scorn
of the unworthy ; and there are at last those who wish to
rob thee of thy only meed, thy posthumous glory. Severe
too are the censures of thy morals. In the gloomy moments
of despondency, I fear thou hast uttered impious and
blasphemous thoughts. But let thy more rigid censors
reflect, that thou wast literally and strictly but a boy.
Let many of thy bitterest enemies reflect what were their
own religious principles, and whether they had any at the
age of fourteen, fifteen, and sixteen. Surely it is a severe
and an unjust surmise that thou wouldst probably have
ended thy life as a victim to the laws, if thou hadst not
ended it as thou didst."

Enough, enough, of the learned antiquaries, and of the
classical and benevolent testimony of Dr. Enox. Chatterton
was, indeed, badly enough off; but he was at least saved
from the pain and shame of reading this woful lamentation
over fallen genius, which circulates splendidly bound in
the fourteenth edition, while he is a prey to worms. As
to those who are really capable of admiring Chatterton's
genius, or of feeling an interest in his fate, I would only

168 The English Pods.

BOk"^^ that I never heard any one speak of any one of liis
works as if it were an old well-known favourite, and had
become a faith and a religion in his mind. It is his name,
his youth, and what he might have lived to have done,
that excite our wonder and admiration. He has the same
sort of posthumous fame that an actor of the last age has —
an abstracted reputation which is independent of anything
we know of his works. The admirers of Collins never
think of him without recalling to their minds his Ode on
Evening or on the Poetical Character. Gray's Elegy
and his poetical popularity are identified together, and
inseparable even in imagination. It is the same with
respect to Burns: when you speak of him as a poet,
you mean his works, his Tam o' Shanter, or his Cotter's
Saturday Night. But the enthusiasts for Chatterton, if
yoii ask for the proofs of his extraordinary genius, are
obliged to turn to the volume, and perhaps find there what
they seek ; but it is not in their minds ; and it is of thod I
spoke. The Minstrel's song in j^Ula is I think the best :

" O ! synge untoe mie roundelaie,
O ! droppe the brynie teare wythe mee,
Dauiice ue moe atte hallie daie,
Lycke a rennynge ryver be.

Mie love ys dedde,

Gon to hys death-bedde,

Al under the wyllowe-tree.

Blacke hys cryne as the wyntera nyghte,
"Whyte hys rode as the sommer snowe,
Rodde hys face as the momyDge lyghte^
Cale he lyes ynne the grave belowe.

Mie love ys dedde,

Gon to hys deatho-bedde,

Al under the wyllowe-tree.

Swote hys tyngue as the throstles note,
Quycko ynne daunce as thoughte canne beet
Del'te hys taboure, codgtlle stote,
O ! hee lyes bie the wyllowe-tree.

Mie love ys dedde,

Gonne to hys death e-bedde,

Alle underre the wyllowe-tree.

On Chatterton, 169

Harke I the ravenne flappes hys wynge,
In tlie briered delle belowe ;
Harke 1 the dethe-owle loude dothe synge^
To the iiyghte-mares as heie goe.

Mie love ys dedde,

Gonne to hys deathe-bedde,

Al under the wyllowe-tree.

See ! the whyte moone sheenes onne hie j
Wiiyterre ys mie true loves shroude ;
Wliyterre yanne the momynge skie,
Wiiyterre yanne the evenynge cloudo.

Mie love ys dedde,

Gon {o hys deathe-bedde,

Al under the wyllowe-tree.

Heere, uponno mie true loves grave,
SchuUe the baren fleurs bo layde,
No one hallie Soyncte to save
Al the celness of a mayde.

Mie love ys dedde,

Gonne to hys deathe-bedde,

Al under the wyllowe-tree.

Wythe mie hondes I 'lie dent the briores
llounde hys hallie corse to gre,
Ouphante I'airie,* lyghte youre fyres,
Heere mie boddie stille schalle bee.

Mie love ys dedde,

Gon to hys deathe-bedde,

Al under the wyllowe-tree.

Comme, wythe acome-coppe and thome^
Drayne my hartys blood awaie ;
Lyfe and all yttes goode I scorne,
Daunce bie nete, or feaste by daie.

Mie love ys dedde,

Gon to hys deathe-bedde,

Al under the wyllowe-tree.

Waterre wytches, crownede wythe reytes,
Bere mee to yer leathalle tyde.
I die ; I comme ; mie true love waytea
Thos the damselle spake, and dyed."

♦ Sic in edit. 4to, 1782, p. 255 ; but did not Chatterton write on/
(oaf) aut fairie i

170 The English Poets. .

To proceed to the more immediate subject of tlio present
Lecture, the character and writings of Bums. Shak-
speare says of some one, that " he was like a man made
after supper of a cheese-paring." Burns the poet was
not such a man. He had a strong mind, and a strong
body, the fellow to it. He had a real heart of flesh and
blood beating in his bosom— you can almost hear it throb.
Some one said, that if you had shaken hands with him,
his hands would have burnt yours. The Gods indeed
'' made him poetical ;" but Nature had a hand in him first.
His heart was in the right place. He did not " create a
soul under the ribs of death," by tinkling siren sounds,
or by piling up centos of poetical diction ; but for the
artificial flowers of poetry, he plucked the mountain-daisy
under his feet ; and a field-mouse, hurrying from its ruined
dwelling, could inspire him with the sentiments of terror
and pity. He hold the plough or the pen with the same
firm, manly grasp ; nor did he cut out poetry as we cut
out watch-papers, with finical dexterity, nor from thfi same
flimsy materials. Bums was not like Shakspeare in the
range of his genius ; but there is something of the same
magnanimity, directness, and unaffected character about
him. He was not a sickly sentimentalist, a namby-pamby
poet, a mincing metre ballad-monger, any more than
Shakspeare. He would as soon hear " a brazen candle-*
stick tuned, or a dry wheel grate on the axletree." He
was as much of a man, not a twentieth part as much of
a poet, as Shakspeare. With but little of his imagination
or inventive power, he had the same life of mind : within
the narrow circle of personal feeling or domestic incidents,
the pulse of his poetry flows as healthily and vigorously.
He had an eye to see, a heart to feel : — no i|iore. His
pictures of good fellowship, of social glee, of quaint hu-
mour, are equal to anything ; they come up to nature, and
they cannot go beyond it. The sly jest collected in his
laughing eye at the sight of the grotesque and ludicrous

On Burns. 171

in manners ; the large tear rolled down his manly cheek
at the sight of another's distress. He has made us as
well acquainted with himself as it is possible to be, has
let out the honest impulses of his native disposition, the
unequal conflict of the passions in his breast, with the
same frankness and truth of description. His strength is
not greater than his weakness : his virtues were greater
than his vices. His virtues belonged to his genius : his
vices to his situation, which did not correspond to hiB
genius.

It has been usual to attack Bums's moral character
and the moral tendency of his writings at the same time ;
and Mr. Wordsworth, in a letter to Mr. Gray, Master of
the High School at Edinburgh, in attempting to defend,
has only laid him open to a more serious and unheard-of
responsibility. Mr. Gray might well have sent him back,
in return for his epistle, the answer of Holofernes in
Love's Labour Lost: — " Via, goodman Dull, thou hast
spoken no word all this while." The author of this per-
formance, which is as weak in effect as it is pompous in
pretension, shows a great dislike of Robespierre, Bona-
parte, and of Mr. Jeffrey, whom he, by some unaccount-
able fatality, classes together as the three most formidable
enemies of the human race that have appeared in his
(Mr. Wordsworth's) remembrance ; but he betrays very
little liking to Burns. He is indeed anxious to get him
out of the unhallowed clutches of the Edinburgh Re-
viewers (as a mere matter of poetical privilege), only to
bring him before a graver and higher tribunal, which is
his own, and after repeating and insinuating ponderous
charges against him, shakes his head, and declines giving
any opinion in so tremendous a case ; so that, though the
judgment of the former critic is set aside, poor Bums
remains just where he was, and nobody gains anything by
the cause but Mr. Wordsworth, in an increasing opinion
of his own wisdom and purity. "Out upon this half-

172 TJie English Poets.

faced fellowship!" The author of the Lyrical Ballads
has thus missed a fine opportunity of doing Burns justice
and himself honour. He might have shown himself a
philosophical prose- writer, as well as a philosophical poet.
He might have offered as amiable and as gallant a defence
of the Muses as my uncle Toby, in the honest simplicity
of his heart, did of the army. He might have said at
once, instead of making a parcel of wry face^ over the
matter, that Burns had written Tam o' Shanter, and that
that alone was enough ; that he could hardly have de-
scribed the excesses of mad, hairbrained, roaring mirth
and convivial indulgence, which are the soul of it, if he
himself had not " drunk full ofter of the ton than of the
well " — unless " the act and practique part of life had been
the mistress of his theorique." Mr. Wordsworth might
have quoted such lines as :

" The landlady and Tam grew gracious,
Wi' favours secret, sweet, and precious ;"— •
or :

** Care, mad to see a man so happy,
E'en drown'd himself among 'the nappy ;" —

and fairly confessed that he could not have written such
lines from a want of proper habits and previous sympathy ;
and that till some great puritanical genius should arise to
do these things equally well without any knowledge of
them, the world might forgive Burns the injuries he had
done his health and fortune in his poetical apprenticeship
to experience, for the pleasure he had afforded them. In-
stead of this, Mr. Wordsworth hints, that with different
personal habits and greater strength of mind, Burns would
have written differently, and almost as well as he does.
He might have taken that line of Gay's —

" The fly that sips treacle is lost in the sweets" —

and applied it in all its force and pathos to the poetical
character. He might have argued that poets are men of

On Bums.

173

genius, and that a man of genius is not a machine ; that
they live in a state of intellectual intoxication, and that it
is too much to expect them to be distinguished by peculiar
sang froid^ circumspection, and sobriety. Poets are by
nature men of stronger imagination and keener sensibilities
than others ; and it is a contradiction to suppose them at
the same time governed only by the cool, dry, calculating
dictates of reason and foresight. Mr. Wordsworth might
have ascertained the boundaries that part the provinces of
reason and imagination; that it is the business of the
understanding to exhibit things in their relative propor-
tions and ultimate consequences; of the imagination to
insist on their immediate impressions, and to indulge
their strongest impulses; but it is the poet's office to
pamper the imagination of his readers and his own with
the extremes of present ecstasy or agony, to snatch the
swift-winged golden minutes, the torturing hour, and to
banish the dull, prosaic, monotonous realities of life i-
both from his thoughts and from his practice. Mr.
"Wordsworth might have shown how it is that all men of
genius, or of originality and independence of mind, are
liable to practical errors from the very confidence their
superiority inspires, which makes them fly in the face of
custom and prejudice, always rashly, sometimes unjustly ;
for, after all, custom and prejudice are not without foun-
dation in truth and reason, and no one individual is a
match for the world in power, very few in knowledge.
The world may altogether be set down as older and wiser
than any single person in it.

Again, our philosophical letter- writer might have en-
larged on the temptations to which Bums was exposed
from his struggles with fortune and the uncertainty of
}iis fate. He might have shown how a poet, not born to
wealth or title, was kept in a constant state of feverish
anxiety with respect to his fame and the means of a pre-
carious livelihood ; that " from being chilled with poverty.

174 The English Poets.

steeped in contempt, he had passed into the sunshine of
fortune, and was lifted to the very pinnacle of publio
favour :" vet even there could not count on the continuance
of success, but was, *^ like the giddy sailor on the mast,
ready with every blast to topple down into the fatal
bowels of the deep I'* He might have traced his habit of
ale-house tippling to the last long precious draught of his
ftivourite usquebaugh which he took in the prospect of
bidding farewell for ever to his native land, and his con-
jugal infidelities to his first disappointment in love, which
would not' have happened to him if he had been born to a
small estate in land, or bred up behind a counter !

Lastly, Mr. Wordsworth might have shown the incom-
patibility between the Muses and the Excise, which never
agreed well together, or met in one seat, till they were
unaccountably reconciled on Bydal Mount. He must
know (no man better) the distraction created by the op-
posite calls of business and of fancy, the torment of ex-
tents, the plague of receipts laid in order or mislaid, the
disagreeableness of exacting penalties or paying the for-
feiture ; and how all this (together with the broaching of
casks and the splashing of beer barrels) must have preyed
upon a mind like Bums's, with more than his natural sen-
sibility and none of his acquired firmness.

Mr. Coleridge, alluding to this circumstance of the
promotion of the Scottish Bard to be* '* a ganger of ale-
firkins," in a poetical epistle to his friend Charles Lamb,
calls upon him in a burst of heartfelt indignation, to gather
a wreath of henbane, nettles, and nightshade :

To twine

The illustrious brow of Scotch nobility.**

If, indeed, Mr. Lamb had undertaken to writ§ a letter in
defence of Burns, how different would it have been from
this of Mr. Wordsworth's I How much better than I can
even imagine it to have been done I

On Burns. 175

It is hardly reasonable to look for a hearty or genuino
defence of Burns from the pen of Mr. Wordsworth ; for
there is no common link of sympathy between them.
Nothing can be more different or hostile than the spirit of
their poetry. Mr. Wordsworth's poetry is the poetry of
mere sentiment and pensive contemplation: Bums's is
a very highly sublimated essence of animal existence.
With Burns, " self-love and social are the ^ame " :

" And we'll tak a cup of kindness yet,
For auld lang syne."

Mr. Wordsworth is " himself alone," a recluse philosopher,
or a reluctant spectator of the scenes of many-coloured
life : moralising on them, not describing, not entering
into them. Robert Burns has exerted all the vigour of
his mind, all the liappiness of his nature, in exalting the
pleasures of wine, of love and good fellowship r* but in
Mr. Wordsworth there is a total disunion and divorce of
the faculties of the mind from those of the body : the
banns are forbid, or a separation is austerely pronounced
from bed and board — d menad et thoro, f From the Lyrical
Ballads it does not appear that men eat or drink, marry
or are given in marriage. If we lived by every sentiment
that proceeded out of mouths, and not by bread or wine,
or if the species were continued like trees (to borrow an
expression from the great Sir Thomas Brown), Mr. Words-
worth's poetry would be just as good as ever. It is not
BO with Burns : he is " famous for the keeping of it up,**
and in his verse is ever fresh and gay. For this, it seems,
he has fallen under the displeasure of the Edinburgh
Eeviewers and the still more formidable patronage of
Mr. Wordsworth's pen :

" Tbiu this was the unkindest cut of all."

I was going to give some extracts out of this composi-^
tion in suppoi*t of what I have said, but I ^nd them too
tedious. Indeed (if I may be allowed to speak my whole

176 The English Poets.

mind, nnder correction), Mr. Wordsworth conld not l)e in
I any way expected to tolerate or give a favourable inter-
I pretation to Burns's constitutional foibles ; even his best
' virtues are not good enough for him. He is repelled and
driven back into himself, not less by the worth than by
I the faults of others. His taste is as exclusive and repug-
nant as his genius. It is because so few things give him
pleasure, that he gives pleasure to so few people. It ig
not every one who can perceive the sublimity of a daisy,
or the pathos to be extracted from a withered thorn !

To proceed from Bums's patrons to his poetry, than
which no two things can be more different. His " Twa
Dogs" is a very spirited piece of description, both as
it respects the animal and human creation, and conveys a
very vivid idea of the manners both of high and low life.
The burlesque panegyric of the first dog —

*• His locked, lettered, braw brass collar
Sliow'd him the gentleman and scholar " —

reminds one of Launce*s account of his dog Crab, where
he is said, as an instance of his being in the way of pro-
motion, " to have got among three or four gentleman-like
dogs under the Duke's table." The " Halloween " is the
most striking and picturesque description of local customs
and scenery. The Brigs of Ayr, the Address to a Haggis,
Scotch Drink, and innumerable othera, are, however, full
of the same kind of characteristic and comic painting.
But his masterpiece in this way is his Tam o' Shanter,
I shall give the beginning of it, but I am afraid I shall
hardly know when to leave off:

•* When chapman billies leave the street,
And drouthy neebors, neebors meet.
As market-days are wearing late.
And folk begin to tak the gate ;
While we sit bousing at the nappy,
And gettin* fou and unco happy.
We think na on the lang Scots miles,
The mosses, waters, slaps, and stiles,

On Burns. 177

■ That lie between us and our hame,
Whare sits our sulky, sullen damo,
Gathering her brows like gathering storm.
Nursing her wrath to keep it warm.

This truth fand honest Tarn o' Shanter,
As he frae Ayr ae night did cantor ;
(Auld Ayr, wham ne'er a town surpasses.
For honest men and bonny lasses.)

O Tam ! hadst thou but been sae wise

As ta'en thy ain wife Kate's advice !

She tauld thee weel thou was a skellum,

A blethering, blustering, drunken blellum ;

That frae November till October

Ae market-day thou was na sober ;

That ilka melder wi* the miller.

Thou sat as long as thou had siller ;

That ev'ry naig was ca'd a shoe on.

The smith and thee gat roaring fou on ;

That at the Lord's house, ev'n on Sunday,

Thou drank wi' Kirkton Jean till Monday —

She prophesied, that late or soon.

Thou would be found deep drown*d in Doon;

Or catch't wi' warlocks in the mirk

By AUoway's auld haunted kirk.

Ah, gentle dames ! it gars me greet,
To think how mony counsels sweet,
How mony lengthened, sage advices,
The husband frae the wife despises I

But to our tale : Ae market night,
Tam had got planted unco right
Fast by an ingle, bleezing finely,
Wi* reaming swats, that drank divinely ;
And at his elbow, Souter Johnny,
Jlis ancient, trusty, drouthy crony ;
Tam lo'ed him like a vera brither ;
They had been fou for weeks thegither.
The night drave on wi' sangs and clatter.
And aye the ale was growing better :
The landlady and Tam grew gracious
Wi' fevours secret, sweet, and precious :
The^'Souter tauld his queerest stories ;
The landlord's laugh was ready chorus;

V

178 The English Poets.

The storm without might rair and rustle,
Tarn did not mind the storm a whistle.

Care, mad to see a man sae happy.
E'en drown'd himsel amang the nappy I
As bees flee hame wi' lades o' treasure,
The minutes wing'd their way wi* pleasure:
Kings may be blest, but Tam was glorious,
O'er a' the ills of life victorious I

But pleasures are like poppies spread.

You seize the flow'r — its bloom is shed ;

Or like the snowfall in the river,

A moment white— then melts for ever;

Or like the Borealis race,

That flit ere you can point their place ;

Or like the rainbow's lovely form.

Evanishing amid the storm.

Nae man can tether time or tide,

The hour approaclies, Tam maun ride ;

That hour, o' night's black arch the key-stane.

That dreary hour he mounts his beast in.

And sic a night he taks the road in,

As ne'er poor sinner was abroad in.

The wind blew as 'twad blawn its last ;
The rattling showers rose on the blast.
The speedy gleams the darkness swallow'd.
Loud, deep, and lang the tliunder bellow'd :
That night a child might understand.
The Deil had business on his hand.

Weel mounted on his grey mare, Meg,
A better never lifted leg,
Tam skelpit on thro' dub and mire,
Despising wind, and rain, and fire ;
Whiles holding fast his guid blue bonnet ;
Whiles crooning o'er some auld Scots sonnet ;
Whiles glowering roimd wi' prudent cares.
Lest bogles catch him unawares ;
Kirk-Alloway was drawing nigh.
Where ghaiats and houlets nightly cry.

By this time he was cross the ford,
Where in the snaw the chapman smoored ;
And past the birks and meikle stane.
Where drunken Charlie brak 'b neck-bane ;

On Burns. 179

And throngh the whins, and by the cairn,
Where hunters fand the murdcr'd bairn ;
And near the thorn, aboon the well.
Where Mungo's mither hang'd hersel.
Before him Doon pours all his floods ;
T]ie doubling storm roars through the woods ;
The lightnings flash from pole to pole ;
Near and more near the thunders roll :
Whan, glimmering through the groaning trees,
Kirk-Alloway seem'd in a bleeze ;
Through ilka bore the beams were glancing ;
And loud resounded mirth and dancing.

Inspiring bold John Barleycorn !

What dangers thou canst make us scorn !

Wi' tippenny, we fear nae evil,

Wi' usquebae, we*ll face the devil !

The swats sae rcam'd in Tammie's noddle.

Fair play, he car*d na deils a boddle.

But Maggie stood right sair astonished.

Till by the heel and hand admonished.

She ventured forward on the light.

And, wow 1 Tam saw an unco sight !

Warlocks and witches in a dance,

Nae cotillon brent new frae France,

But hornpipes, jigs, stratlispeys, and reels.

Put life and mettle in their heels.

A winnock -bunker in the east,

There sat auld Nick in shape o' beast ;

A towzie tyke, black, grim, and large,

To gie them music was his charge ;

He screw'd the pipes, and gart them skirl,

Till roof and rafters a' did dirL

Coffins stood round like open presses.

That shawed the dead in their last dresses ;

And, by some devilish cantrip slight.

Each in its cauld hand held a light—

By which heroic Tam was able

To note upon the haly table,

A murderer's banes in gibbet-aims ;

Twa span-lang, wee unchristened bairns ;

A thief, new cutted frae a rape,

Wi' his last gasp his gab did gape ;

Five tomahawks, wi* bluid red rusted ;

Five scimitars, wi' murder crusted ;

180 The English Poets.

A garter, which a babe had strangled ;
A knife, a father's throat had mangled*
Whom his ain son o' life bereft.
The grey hairs yet stack to the heft ;
Wr mair o' horrible and awfu\
Wliich e'en to name wad be unlawfu'.

As Tammie glowred, amazed and curious,

The mirth and fun grew fSeist and furious :

The Piper loud and louder blew ;

The dancers quick and quicker flew ;

They reel'd, they set, they cross d, they cleeki^

Till ilka Garlin swat and reekit,

And coost her duddies to the wark.

And linket at it in her sark f

Now Tarn, O Tam ! had they been queans
A' plump and strappin' in their teens ;
Their sarks, instead o' creeshie flannen.
Been snaw- white seventeen hunder linen I
Thir breeks o' mine, my only pair,
That anue were plush, o' gude blue hair,
I wad hae gi'en them off my hurdies.
For ae blink o* the bonnie burdies !

But withered beldams, auld and droll,
Rigwoodie hags wad spean a foal,
Louping and flinging on a cummock,
I wonder didna turn thy stomach.

But Tam kenned what was what fu' brawlie.
There was ae winsome wench and waly.
That night enlisted in the core,
(Lang after kenned on Garrick shore ;
For mony a beast to dead she shot.
And perished mony a bonnie boat.
And shook baith meikle com and bear.
And kept the country-side in fear.)
Her cutty-sark, o* Paisley ham,
That while a lassie she had worn.
In longitude tho' sorely scanty.
It was her best, and she was vauntie. —
Ah 1 little kenned thy reverend grannie^
That sark she coft for her wee Nannie,
Wi* twa pund Scots (twas a' her riches).
Wad ever grac*d a dance o' witches 1

On Burns. 181

But here my Muse her wing maun cour ;
8ic flights are fox beyond her power :
To sing how Nannie lap and flang
(A souple jad she was and Strang j,
And Iiow Tarn stood like ane bewitched.
And tliouglit Ills very een enriched ;
Even Siitan glowred and fidged fu' fain,
And botched, and blew wi' might and main ;
Till first ae caper, syne anither,

Tarn tint his reason a* thegitber, * 1^

And roai-s out, ** Weel done, Cutty Sark !* z J^m^j^^MAt^t-
And in an iiiiitant all was dark ; '

And scarcely had he Maggie mllied.
When out the hellish legion sallied.

As bees bizz out wi' angry fyke

Wiien plundering herds assail their byke ;

As open pussie's mortal foes,

When, pop ! she starts before their nose ;

As eager'rins the market-crowd,

When ** Catcli the thief!" resounds aloud ;

So Maggie runs, the witches follow,

Wi' mony an eldritch screech and hollow.

Ah, Tarn ! ah. Tarn ! thoull get thy fairin* I
In hell they'll roast thee like a herrin' !
In vain thy Kate awaits thy comin' I
Kate soon will be a woefu' woman !
Now, do thy speedy utmost, Meg,
And win tlie key-stane o* the brig ;
Tiiere at them tiiou thy tail may toss,
A running stream they darena cross ;
But ere tiie key-stane she could make,
The fient a tail she had to shake 1
For Nannie, far before tlie rest.
Hard upon noble Maggie prest.
And flew at Tarn wi furious ettle ;
But little wist she Maggie's mettle —
Ae spring brought aff her master hale,
But left behind her ain grey tail :
Tile Carlin claught her by the ramp,
And leili poor Maggie scarce a stump.

Now, wha this tale o' truth shall read,
Uk man and mother's son take heed :

182 ITie English Poets.

Whene'er to drink you are inclined.
Or cutty sarks run in your mind,
Think ! ye may buy the joys ower dear ;
Remember Tarn o* Shantei^s mare."*

Bums has given the extremes of licentious eccentricity
and conviyial enjpyment, in the story of this scapegrace,
and of patriarchal simplicity and gravity in describing the
old national character of the Scottish peasantry. The
Cotter's Saturday Night is a noble and pathetic picture of
human manners, mingled with a fine religious awe; It
comes over the mind like a slow and solemn strain of
music. The soul of the poet aspires from this scene of
low-thoughted care, and reposes, in trembling hope, on
'* the bosom of its Father and its God." Hardly any-
thing can bo more touching than the following stanzas,
for instance, whether as they describe human interests, or
breathe a lofty devotional spirit :

** The toil-worn Cottc r frae his labour goes,
This night his weekly moil is at an end.

Collects his spades, his mattocks, and his hoes.
Hoping the mom in ease and rest to spend,

And weary, o'er the moor, his course does hameward bend.

At length his lonely cot appears in riew,

Beneath the bhelter of an aged tree ;
Th* expectant wee-things, toddlin, stacher through

To meet their dad, wi' flichterin noise and glee.
His wee-bit ingle, blinkin bonnily,

His clean hearth-stane, his thrlftie wifie's smile.
The lisping infant prattling on his knee,

Does a' his weary kiaugh and care beguile,
And makes him quite forget his labour and his toil,

Belyve. the elder bairns come drapping ia,
At service out, amang the farmers roun',

Some ca' the plough, some herd, some tentie rin
A cannie errand to a neibor town ;

Their eldest hope, their Jenny, woman-grown,
In youthfu' bloom, love sparkling in her e*e,

Comes hame, perhaps, to shew a braw new gown,

♦ Works of Bums, ed. Chambers, iii. 152-8.— Ejk

On Burns. 183

Or deposite her sair-won penny-fee.
To help her parents dear, it they in hardsliip be.

With joy nnfeign'd, brothers and sisters meet,

And each for other's weelfare kindly spiers ;
The social hours, swift-wing'd, unnoticed fleet ;

Each tells the uncos that he sees or hears :
The parents, partial, eye their hopeful years ;

Anticipation forward points the view ;
The mother, wl' her needle an' her shears.

Gars auld claes look amaist as weel 's the new ;
The father mixes a' wi' admonition due.

But, hark ! a rap comes gently to the door ;

Jenny, wha kens the meaning o' the same.
Tells how a neibor lad cam oer the moor,

To do some errands, and convoy her hame.
The wily mother sees the conscious flame

Sparkle in Jenny's e'e, and flush her cheek ;
With heart-struck anxious care, inquires his name.

While Jenny hafllins is afraid to speak ;
Weel pleas'd the mother hears it's nae wild, worthless rako.

Wi* kindly welcome, Jenny brings him ben ;

A strappin' youth ; he taks the mother's eye ;
Bly the Jenny sees the visit's no ill ta'en ;

The father cracks of horses, pleughs, and kye.
The youngster's artless heart o'erflows wi* joy,

But blate an' lathefu', scarce can weel behave ;
The mother, wi' a woman's wiles, can spy

What makes the youth sae bashfu' and sao grave ;
Weel pleas'd to thiiik her bairn's respected like the lave.

But now the supper crowns their simple board,

The halesome parritch, chief o* Scotia's food :
The soupe their only hawkie does aflbrd,

That 'yont the hallan snugly chows her cood :
The damo brings forth, in complimental mood,

To grace the lad, her weel-hain'd kebbuck, fell,
An' aft he's prest, an' aft he ca's it guid ;

The frugal wifie, garrulous, will tell.
How 'twas a towmoud auld« sin' lint wa£ i' the beU.

184 The English Poets.

The cheerfu' supper done, wi' serious face.

They, round the ingle, form a circle wide ;
The sire turns o'er, with patriaichal grace,

The big ha'-Bible, ance his father's pride :
His bonnet rev'rently is laid aside.

His lyart haffets wearing tbin an* bare ;
Those strains that once did sweet in Zion glide,

He wales a portion wi' judicious care ;
And *' Let us worsLip God V he says, with solemn air.

They chant their artless notes in simple guise ;

They tune their hearts, by far the noblest aim :
Perhaps Dundee's wild-warbliiig measures rise,

Or plaintive Martyrs, worthy of tlie name ;
Or noble Elgin beets the heavenward flame,

The sweetest far of Scotia's holy lays :
Compar'd with these, Italian trills are tame ;

The tickled ear no heart-felt raptures raise ;
Nae unison hae they with our Creator's praise." —

Burns's poetical epistles to his friends are admirably
whether for the touches of satire, the painting of character,
or the sincerity of friendship they display. Those t*
Captain Grose, and to Davie, a brother poet, are amon^
the best: — they are "the true pathos and sublime cf
human life." His prose-letters are sometimes tincture!
with affectation. They seem written by a man who hts
been admired for his wit, and is expected on all occasiois
to shine. Those in which he expresses his ideas »f
natural beauty in reference to Alison s Essay on Tast3,
and advocates the keeping up the remembrances of oH
customs and seasons, are the most powerfully written.
His English serious odes and moral stanzas are, in general,
failures, such as the Lament, Man was made to Mourn,
&c., nor do I much admire his *' Scots wha hae wi' VVallaee
bled." lu this strain of didactic or sentimental moralis-
ing, the lines to Glencairn are the most happy and im-
pressive. His imitations of the old humorous ballad style
of 'Ferguson's songs are no whit inferior to the admirable
originals, such as '' John Anderson, my Joe/' and many

Oq Burns and the Old Ballads, 185

more. But of all his productions, the pathetic and serious
love-songs which he has left behind him, in the manner of
the old ballads, are perhaps those which take the deepest
and most lasting hold of the mind. Such are the lines to
Mary Morison, and those entitled Jessy :

'* Here's a health to ane I lo*e dear —
Here's a health to ane I lo*e dear —
Thou ait sweet as the smile when fond lovers meet,
And soft as tlieir parting tear — Jessy 1

Altho* thou maun never be mine,

Altho* even hope i-s denied ;
'Tis sweeter for tiiee despairing,

Than aught iu the world beside — Jessy I"

The conclusion of the other is as follows :

" Yestreen, when to the trembling string

The dance gaed through the lighted ha*,
To t'lee my fancy took its wing,

1 sat, but neither heard nor saw.
Thu' tliis was fair, and that was bra'.

And yon the toast of a* the town,
I sighed and said among them a',

Ye ore na* Mary Morison."

That beginning, "Oh gin my love were a bonny red
rose/* is a piece of rich and fantastic desciiption. One
would think that nothing could surpass these in beauty of
expression and in true pathos : and nothing does or can,
but some of the old Scotch ballads themselves. There is in
them a still more original cast of thought, a more romantic
imagery — the thistle's glittering down, the gilliflower on
the old garden-wall, the horseman's silver bells, the hawk
on its perch ; a closer intimacy with nature, a firmer
reliance on it, as the only stock of wealth which the mind
has to resort to, a more infantine simplicity of manners, a
greater strength of affection, hopes longer cherished and
longer deferred, sighs that the heart dare hardly heave,
and ^* thoughts that often lie too deep for tears/' We

186 The English Pods.

seem to feel that those who wrote and sang them (the
early minstrels) lived in the open air, wandering on from
place to place with restless feet and thoughts, and lending
•an ever-open ear to the fearful accidents of war or love,
floating on the hreath of old tradition or common fame,
and moving the strings of their harp with sounds that
sank into a nation's heart. How fine an illustration of
this is that passage in Don Quixote, where the knight and
Sancho, going, in search of Dulcinea, inquire their way of
the countryman, who was driving his mules to plough
before break of day, ** singing the ancient ballad of Ron-
cesvalles." Sir Thomas Overbury describes his country
girl as still accompanied with fragments of old songs.
One of the best and most striking descriptions of the
eifectd of this mixture of national poetry and music is to
be found in one of the letters of Archbishop Herring,
giving an account of a confirmation tour in the mountains
of Wales :

* ** That pleasure over, our work became very arduous, for we were
to mount a rock, and in many places of the road, over natural stairs
of 8 lone. I submitted to this, which they told me was but a taste
of the country, and to prepare me for worse things to come. How-
ever, worse things did not come that morning, for we dined soon
after out of our own w^allets ; and though oiur inn stood in a place
of the mo;it fi-ightful solitude, and the best formed for the habitation
of monks (who once possessed it) in the world, yet we made a
cheerful meal. The novelty of the thing gave me spirits, and the
air gave me appetite much keener than the knife I ate with. We
had our music too ; for there came in a harper, who soon drew about
us a group of figures that Hogai th would have gif en any price for.
The harper was in his true place and attitude ; a man and woman
stood before him, singing to his instrmnent wildly, but not dis-
agreeably ; a little dirty child was playing with the bottom of the
harp; a. woman in a sick night-cap hanging over the stairs; a boy
with crutches fixed in a staring attention, and a girl carding wool
in the chimney, and rocking a cradle with her naked feet, inter-
rupted in her business by the charms of the music ; all ragged and
dirty, and all silently attentive. These figures gave us a most
entertaining picture, and would please you or any man of obsen a-

On the Old Ballads. 187

tion; and one reflection gave me a particular comfort, that the
assembly before us demonstrated, that even here the influential sun
warmed poor mortals, and inspired them with love and music."

I could wish that Mr. Wilkie had been recommended to
take this group as the subject of his admirable pencil;
he has painted a picture of Bathsbeba instead.

In speaking of the old Scotch ballads, I need do no
more than mention the name of Auld Eobin Gray. The
effect of reading this old Iballad * is as if all our hopes and
fears hung upon the last fibre of the heart, and we felt
that giving way. What silence, what loneliness, what
leisure for grief and despair !

'* My father pressed me sair,

Though my mother did na' speak ;
But she looked in my face
Till my heart was like to break."

The irksomeness of the situations, the sense of painful
dependence, is excessive ; and yet the sentiment of deep-
rooted, patient affection triumphs over all, and is the only
impression thq,t remains. Lady Ann BothweU's Lament is
XU)t, I think, quite equal to the lines beginning —

** O waly, waly, up you bank,

And waly, waly, down you brae,
And waly by your river's side,

Where I and my love was wont to gae.
Waly, waly, gin love be bonny,

A little while when it is new ;
But when its auld, it waxes cauld.

And wears awa' like morning dew.

I leant my back unto an aik,

I thought it was a trusty tree ;
But flrst it bow'd, and sine it brake,

And sae did my fause love to me.

♦ One of the numerous imitations of the old minstrelsy. This
celebrated production is nciv generally believed to have proceeded
from the pen of Lady Ann Barnard. — En.

188 Tlie English Poets.

'Wimn cockle-shells turn siller bclU,

And muscles grow on every tree,
Wlinii frost and siiaw sail warm us a',

Then sail my love prove true to me.

Now Arthur seat sail be my bed,

The sheets sail ne'er be fy'l W by me ;
Saint Anton's well sail be my drink.

Since my true-love has loisakcn me.
O Martinmas wind, when wilt thou blaw,

And bhakc the green leaves aff the true?
O gentle death, when wilt thou come,

And take a life that wearies me !

Tis not the frost that freezes fell.

Nor blawing snaw's inclemensey,
Tis not sic cauld, that makes me cry.

But my love's heart grown cauld to meu
Whan we came in by Glas^gow town,

We were a con.cly sight to see,
My love was cled in the black velvet,

And I myself in cramasie.

But had I wist before I kiss'd,

That love had been sae ill to win ;
I'd iock'd my htart in a case of gowd,

And pin'd it with a siller pin.
Oh ! if my youn^e babe were born,

And set upon the nurse's knee,
And I mysel were di ad and gone,

For a maid again I'll never be.***

The finest modem imitation of this style is tlie Braes of
Yarrow ;f and perhaps the finest subject for a story of the
same kind in any modern book, is that told in Turner's
History of England, of a Mahometan woman, who having
fallen in love with an English merchant, the father of
Thomas a Becket, followed him all the way to England,
knowing only the word London, and the name of her
lover, Gilbert.

But to have done with this, which is rather too serious

* Maidment's Scottish Songs and BaUads, 1868, ii. 49.— Ed.
t By William Hamilton of Bangour. — En.

On the Old Ballads. 189

a subject. The old EDglish ballads are of a gayer and
more lively turn. They are adventurous and romantic ;
but they relate chiefly to good living and good fellowship,
to drinking and hunting scenes. Bobin Hood is the chief
of these, and he still, in imagination, haunts Sherwood
Forest. The archers green glimmer under the waving
branches ; the print on the grass remains where they have
just finished their noontide meal under the green-wood
tree ; and the echo of their bugle-horn and twanging bows
resounds through the tangled mazes of the forest, as the
tall slim deer glances startled by :

** The trees in Sherwood Forest are old and good ;
The grass beneath them now is dimly green :
Are they deserted all ? Is no young mien,

With loose-slung bugle, met within the wood ?

No arrow found — foil'd of its autler'd food —

Struck in the oak's rude side ? — Is there nought seem
To mark the revelries which there have been.

In the sweet days of merry Robin Hood ?

Go there with summer, and with evening —go
In the soft shadows, like some wand'ring man—
And thou shalt far amid the forest know

The archer-men in green, with belt and bow,
Feasting on pheasant, river-fowl, and swan.
With Hobin at their head, and Marian."*

* Sonnet on Sherwood Forest, by J. H. BeynQldfl» Esq.

( 190 )

LECTURE Vni.

ON THE LIVING POETS [1818.]

** No more of talk where God or Angel guest
With man, as with his friend, familiar us*d
To sit indulgent."

Oenius is the heir of fame ; but the hard condition on
which the bright reversion must be earned is the loss of
life. Fame is the recompense not of the living, but of
the dead. The temple of £a.me stands upon the grave :
the flame that bums upon its altars is kindled from the
ashes of great men. Fame itself is immortal, but it is
not begot till the breath of genius is extinguished. For
fame is not popularity, the shout of the multitude, the
idle buzz of fashion, the venal puff, the soothing flattery
of favour or of friendship ; but it is the spirit of a man
surviving himself in the minds and thoughts of other men,
undying and imperishable. It is the power which the
intellect exercises over the intellect, and the lasting
homage which is paid to it as such, independently of
time and circumstances, purified from partiality and evil-
speaking. Fame is the sound which the stream of high
thoughts, carried down to future ages, makes as it flows :
deep, distant, murmuring evermore like the waters of the
mighty ocean. He who has ears truly touched to this
music, is in a manner deaf to the voice of popularity.
The love of fame diflfers from mere vanity in this, that the
one is immediate and personal, the other ideal and ab-
straicted. It is not the direct and gross homage paid to
himself that the lover of true fame seeks or is proud of,
but the indirect, and pure homage paid to the eternal

On the Modern Pods. 191

forms of truth and beauty as they are reflected in his mind, ^-
that gives him confidence and hope. The love of nature
is the first thing in the mind of the true poet : the admira-
tion of himself, the last. A man of genius cannot well be
a coxcomb ; for his raind is too full of other things to
be much occupied with his own person. He who is con*'
scions of great powers in himself, has also a high standard
of excellence with which to compare his efforts: he ap-
peals also to a test and judge of merit, which is the
highest, but which is too remote, grave, and impartial, to
flatter his self-love extravagantly, or puff him up with in-
tolerable and vain conceit. This, indeed, is one test of
genius and of real greatness of mind, whether a man can
wait patiently and calmly for the award of posterity,
satisfied with the unwearied exercise of his faculties,
retired within the sanctuary of his own thoughts; or
whether he is eager to forestal his own immortality, and
mortgage it for a newspaper puff. He who thinks much
of himself, will be in danger of being forgotten by the
rest of the world : he who is always trying to lay tiolent
hands on reputation, will not secure the best and most
lasting. If the restless candidate for praise takes no
pleasure, no sincere and heartfelt delight, in his works,
but as they are admired and applauded by others, what
should others see in them to admire or applaud ? They
cannot be expected to admire them because they are liiSy
but for the truth and nature contained in them, which
must first be inly felt and copied with severe delight, from
the love of truth and nature, before it can ever appear '
there. Was Raphael, think you, when he painted his ,
pictures of the Virgin and Child in all their inconceivable (
truth and beauty of expression, thinking most of his ^
subject or of himself ? Do you suppose that Titian, when
he painted a landscape, was pluming himself on being
thought the finest colourist in the world, or making
himself so by looking at nature ? Do you imagine that

192 The English Poets.

Shakspeare, when he wrote Lear or Othello, was thinking
of anything but Lear and Othello ? Or that Mr. Kean,
when he plays these characters, is thinking of the
audience ? No : he who would be great in the eyes of
others, must first learn to be nothing in his own. The
love of fame, as it enters at times into his mind, is only
another name for the love of excellence ; or it is the am-
bition to attain the highest excellence, sanctioned by the
highest authority, that of time.

Those minds, then, which are the most entitled to
expect it, can best put up with the postponement of their
claims to lasting fame. They can afford to wait. They
are not afraid that truth and nature will ever wear out,
will lose their gloss with novelty or their effect with
fashion. If their works have the seeds of immortality in
them, they will live ; if they have not, they care little
about them as theirs. They do not complain of the start
which others have got of them in the race of evenlasting
renown, or of the impossibility of attaining the honours
which time alone can give, during the term of their
natural lives. They know that no applause, however loud
and violent, can anticipate or overrule the judgment of
posterity; that the opinion of no one individual, nor of
any one generation, can have the weight, the authority (to
say nothing of the force of sympathy and prejudice),
which must belong to that of successive generations. The
brightest living reputation cannot be equally imposing to
the imagination, with that which is covered and rendered
venerable with the hoar of innumerable ages. No modem
production can have the same atmosphere of sentiment
around it as the remains of classical antiquity. But then
our moderns may console themselves with the reflection,
that they will be old in their turn, and will either be
remembered with still increasing honours, or quite for-
gotten !

I would "speak of the living poets as I have spoken of

On the Modern Pods. 193

the dead (for I think highly of many of them) ; but I
cannot speak of them with the same reverence, because I
do not feel it ; with the same confidence, because I cannot
have the same authority to sanction my opinion. I cannot
be absolutely certain that anybody, twenty years hence,
will think anything about any of them ; but we may be
pretty sure that Milton and Shakspeare will be remem-
bered twenty years hence. We are, therefore, not without
excuse if we husband our enthusiasm a little, and do not
prematurely lay out our whole stock in untried ventures,
and what may turn out to be false bottoms. I have
myself outlived one generation of favourite poets, the
Darwins, the Hayleys, the Sewards. Who reads them
now ? If, however, I have not the verdict of posterity to
bear me out in bestowing the most unqualified praises on
their immediate successors, it is also to be remembered,
that neither does it warrant me in condemning them.
Indeed, it was not my wish to go into this ungrateful
part of the subject ; but something of the sort is expected
from me, and I must run the gauntlet as well as I can.
Another circumstance that adds to the difGiculty of doing
justice to all parties is, that I happen to have had a
personal acquaintance with some of these jealous votaries
of the Muses ; and that is not the likeliest way to imbibe
a high opinion of the rest. Poets do not praise one
another in the language of hyperbole. I am afraid, there-
fore, that I labour under a degree of prejudice against
some of the most popular poets of the day, from an early
habit of deference to the critical opinions of some of the
least popular. I cannot say that I ever learnt much
about Shakspeare or Milton, Spenser or Chaucer, from
these profecsed guides ; for I never heard them say much
about them. They were always talking of themselves and
one another. Nor am I certain that this sort of personal
intercourse with living authors, while it takes away all
real relish or &eedom of opinion with regard to their

o

194 The English Pods.

contemporaries, greatly enhances our respect for them-
selves. Poets are not ideal beings ; but have their prose-
sides, like the commonest of the people. We often hear
persons say, What they would have given to have seen
Shakspeare I For my part, I would give a great deal not
to have seen him ; at least, if he was at all like anybody
else that I have ever seen. But why should he ? for his
works are not I This is, doubtless, one great advantage
which the dead have over the living. It is always for-
tunate for ourselves and others when we are prevented
from exchanging admiration for knowledge. The splendid
vision that in youth haunts our idea of the poetical
character, fades upon acquaintance into the light of
common day ; as the azure tints that deck the mountain's
brow are lost on a nearer approach to them. It is well,
according to the moral of one of the Lyrical Ballads,
" To leave Yarrow unvisited." But to leave this " fSace-
making," and begin.

I am a great admirer of the female writers of the present
day ; they appear to me like so many modem Muses. I
could be in love with Mrs. Inchbald, romantic with Mrs.
Eadcliffe, and sarcastic with Madame D'Arblay : but they
are novel-writers, and, like Audrey, may " thank the Gods
for not having made them poetical." Did any one here
ever read Mrs. Leicester's School ? * If they have not, I
wish they would ; there will be just time before the next
three volumes of the Tales of My Landlord come out.
That is not a school of affectation, but of humanity. No
one can think too highly of the work, or highly enough
of the author.

The first poetess I can recollect is Mrs. Barbauld, with
whose works I became acquainted before those of any
other author, male or female, when I was learning to spell
words of one syllable in her story-books for children. I

* A series of Tales for Children, by Miss Lamb, assisted by her
brother Charles. The first edition appeared in 1808. — En.

On Mrs. Barbauld, dtc. 195

became acquainted with her poetical works long after in
Enfield's Speaker, and remember being much divided in
my opinion at that time between her Ode to Spring and
Collin's Ode to Evening. I wish I could repay my childish
debt of gratitude in terms of appropriate praise. She is a
very pretty poetess ; and, to my fency, strews the flowers
of poetry most agreeably round the borders of religious
controversy. She is a neat and pointed prose-writer. Her
Thoughts on the Inconsistency of Human Expectations,
is one of the most ingenious and sensible essays in the
language. There is the same idea in one of BarroW's
Sermons.

Mrs. Hannah More is another celebrated modem poetess,
and I believe still living. She has written a great deal
which I have never read.

Miss Baillie must make up this trio of female poets.
Her tragedies and comedies, one of each to illustrate each
of the passions separately from the rest, are heresies in
the dramatic art. She is a Unitarian in poetry. With
her the passions are, like the French republic, one and
indivisible : they are not so in nature, or in Shakspeare.
Mr. Southey has, I believe, somewhere expressed an
opinion, that the Basil of Miss Baillie is superior to
Homeo and Juliet. I shall not stay to contradict him.
On the other hand, I prefer her De Montfort, which was
condemned on the stage, to some later tragedies, which
Viave been more fortunate — to the Eemorse, Bertram, and,
xastly, Fazio. There is in the chief character of that
play a nerve, a continued unity of interest, a setness of
purpose and precision of outline which John Kemble
alone was capable of giving ; and there is all the grace
which women have in writing. In saying that De Mont-
fort was a character which just suited Mr. Kemble, I
mean to pay a compliment to both. He was not '' a man
of no maik or likelihood ;" and what he could be supposed
to do particularly well, must have a meaning in it. As

/

196 The English Pods.

to the other tragedies just mentioned, there is no reason
why any common actor should not '' make mouths in them
at the invisible event," — one as well as another. Having
thus expressed my sense of the merits of this authoress, I
must add, that her comedy of the Election, performed last
summer [1817] at the Lyceum with indifferent success,
appears to me the perfection of baby-house theatricals.
Everything in it has such a do-me-good air, is so insipid
and amiable. Virtue seems such a pretty playing at
make-believe, and vice is such a naughty word. It is a
theory of some French author, that little girls ought not
to be suffered to have dolls to play with, to call them
pretty dears, to admire their black eyes and cherry cheeks,
to lament and bewail over them if they fall down and
hurt their faces, to praise them when they are good, and
scold them when they are naughty. It is a school of
affectation: Miss Baillie has profited of it. She treats
her grown men and women as little girls treat their dolls,
makes moral puppets of them, pulls the wires, and they
talk virtue and act vice, according to their cue and the
title prefixed to each comedy or tragedy, not from any
real passions of their own, or love either of virtue or
vice.

The transition from these to Mr. Eogers's Pleasures of
Memory is not far : he is a very lady-like poet. He is
an elegant, but feeble writer. He wraps up obvious
thoughts in a glittering cover of fine words, is full of
enigmas with no meaning to them, is studiously inverted
and scrupulously far-fetched ; and his verses are poetry,
chiefly because no particle, line, or syllable of them reads
like prose. He differs from Milton in this respect, who
is accused of having inserted a number of prosaic lines in
Paradise Lost. This kind of poetry, which is a more
minute and inoffensive species of the Delia Cruscan, is
like the game of asking what one's thoughts are like. It
is a tortuous, tottering, wriggling, fidgety translation of

On Rogers, CampheU, dtc. 197

everytliiDg from the vulgar tongue, into aU the tantalising,
teasing, tripping, lisping mimminee-jrimminee of the highest
brilliancy and fashion of poetical diction. You have
nothing like truth of nature or simplicity of expression.
The fastidious and languid reader is never shocked by
meeting, from the rarest chance in the world, with a single
homely phrase or intelligible idea. You cannot see the
thought for the ambiguity of the language, the figure for
the finery, the picture for the varnish. The whole is
refined, and frittered away into an appearance of the most
evanescent brilliancy and tremulous imbecility. There
is no other fault to be found with the Pleasures of
Memory, than a want of taste and genius. \The senti-
ments are amiable, and the notes at the end highly in-
teresting, particularly the one relating to the Countess's
Pillar (as it is called) between Appleby and Penrith,
erected (as the inscription tells the thoughtful traveller)
by Anne Countess of Pembroke, in the year 1648, in
memory of her last parting with her good and pious
mother in the same place in the year 1616 —

" To shew that power of love, how great
Beyond all human estimate."

This story is also told in the poem, but with so many
artful innuendoes and tinsel words, that it is hardly intel-
ligible ; and still less does it reach the heart.

Campbell's Pleasures of Hope is of the same school :
in which a painful attention is paid to the expression in
proportion as there is little to express, and the decom-
position of prose is substituted for the composition of
poetry. How much the sense and keeping in the ideas
are sacrificed to a jingle of words and epigranmiatic turn
of expression, may be seen in such lines as the following :
— one of the characters, an old invalid, wishes to end his
days under

** Some hamlet shade, to yield his sickly form
Health in the breeze, and shelter in the storm.'*

198 I'he English Poets.

Now the antithesis here totally fails : for it is the breeze,
and not the tree or, as it is quaintly expressed, hamlet
shade that affords health, though it is the tree that affords
shelter in or from the storm. Instances of the same sort
of curiosa infelicitas are not rare in this author. His
verses on the Battle of Hohenlinden have considerable
spirit and animation. His Gertrude of Wyoming is his
principal performance. It is a kind of historical para-
phrase of Mr. Wordsworth's poem of Euth. It shows
little power, or power enervated by extreme fastidiousness^

It is

" Of outward show

Elaborate : of inward less exact."

There are painters who trust more to the setting of their
pictures than to the truth of the likeness. Mr. Campbell
always seems to me to be thinking how his poetry will
look when it comes to be hot-pressed on superfine wove
paper, to have a disproportionate eye to points and commas,
and dread of errors of the press. He is so afraid of doing
wrong, of making the smallest mistake, that he does little
or nothing. Lest he should wander irretrievably from
the right path, he stands still. He writes according to
established etiquette. He offers the Muses no violence.
If he lights upon a good thought, he immediately drops it
for fear of spoiling a good thing. When he launches a
sentiment that you think will float him triumphantly for
once to the bottom of the stanza, he stops short at the end
of the first or second line, and stands shivering on the
brink of beauty, afraid to trust himself to the fathomless
abyss. Tutvs nimium, timidusque proceUm. His very
circumspection betrays him. The poet, as well as the
woman, that deliberates is undone. He is much like a
man whose heart fails him just as he is going up in a
balloon, and who breaks his neck by flinging himself out
of it when it is too late. Mr. Campbell too often maims
and mangles his ideas before they are full fonned, to fit

On Campbell. 199

them to the Procrustes' bed of criticism, or strangles his

intellectual offspring in the birth, lest they should come

to an untimely end in the Edinburgh Review. He plays

the hypercritic on himself, and starves his genius to death

from a needless apprehension of a plethora. No writer

who thinks habitually of the critics, either to tremble at

their censures or set them at defiance, can write well. It

is the business of reviewers to watch poets, not of poets

to watch reviewers. There is one admirable simile in

this poem of the European child brought by the sooty

Indian in his hand, "like morning brought by night."

The love-scenes in Gertrude of Wyoming breathe a balmy

voluptuousness of sentiment; but they are generally

broken off in the middle: they are like the scent of a

bank of violets, faint and rich, which the gale suddenly

conveys in a different direction. Mr. Campbell is careful

of his own reputation, and economical of the pleasure of

his readers. He treats them as the fox in the fable treated

his guest, the stork ; or, to use his own expression, his fine

things are

" Like angels' visits, few, and far between."*

There is another fault in this poem, which is the me-
chanical structure of the fable. The most striking events
occur in tho shape of antitheses. The story is cut into
the form of a parallelogram. There is the same systematic
alternation of good and evil, of violence and repose, that
there is of light and shade in a picture. The Indian,
who is the chief agent in the interest of the poem, vanishes
and returns after long intervals, like the periodical revo-
lutions of the planets. He unexpectedly appears just in

* There is the same idea in Blair's Grave :

Its visits,

■ " Alio TlO&bO,

Like those of angels, short, and far between/

Mr. Campbell in altering the expression has spoiled it. ** Few,**
and ** far between," are the same thing. [Campbell never forgave
the author this exposure of his plagiarism. — £d.]

200 The English Poets.

the nick of time, after years of absence, and withont any
known reason but the convenience of the author and the
astonishment of the reader : as if nature were a machine
constructed on a principle of complete contrast, to produce
a theatrical effect. Nee Detis irUersitj nisi digntis vindice
nodus. Mr« Campbell's savage never appears but upon
great occasions, and then his punctuality is preternatural
and alarming. He is the most wonderful instance on
record of poetical rdiahUity. The most dreadful mischief
happen at the most mortifying moments ; and when your
expectations are wound up to the highest pitch, you are
sure to have them knocked on the head by a premeditated
and remorseless stroke of the poet's pen. This is done so
often for the convenience of the author, that in the end it
ceases to be for the satisfaction of the reader.

Tom Moore is a poet of a quite different stamp. He is
as heedless, gay, and prodigal of his poetical wealth, as
the other is careful, reserved, and parsimonious. The
genius of both is national. Mr. Moore's Muse is another
Ariel, as light, as tricksy, as indefatigable, and as humane
a spirit. His fancy is for ever on the wing, flutters in
the gale, glitters in the sun. Everything lives, moves,
and sparkles in his poetry, while over all love waves his
purple light. His thoughts are as restless, as many, and
as bright as the insects that people the sun's beam.
" So work the honey-bees," extracting liquid sweets from
opening buds ; so the butterfly expands its wings to the
idle air; so the thistle's silver down is wafted over
summer seas. An airy voyager on life's stream, his mind
inhales the Iragrance of a thousand shores, and drinks
of endless pleasures under halcyon skies. Wherever his
footsteps tend over the enamelled ground of fairy fiction —

" Around him the bees in play flutter and cluster,
And gaudy butterflies frolic around."

The fault of Mr. Moore is an exuberance of involuntary

On Moore. 201

power. His facility of production lessens the effect of,
and hangs as a dead weight upon, what he produces.
His levity at last oppresses. The infinite delight he takes
in such an infinite number of things, creates indifference
in minds less susceptible of pleasure than his own. He
exhausts attention by being inexhaustible. His variety
cloys ; his rapidity dazzles and distracts the sight. The
graceful ease with which he lends himself to every subject,
the genial spirit with which he indulges in every senti-
ment, prevents him from giving their full force to the
masses of things, from connecting them into a whole.
He wants intensity, strength, and grandeur. His mind
does not brood over the great and permanent : it glances
over the surfaces, the first impressions of things, instead
of grappling with the deep-rooted prejudices of the mind,
its inveterate habits, and that '' perilous stuff that weighs
upon the heart." His x>6n, as it is rapid and fanciful,
wants momentum and passion. It requires the same
principle to make us thoroughly like poetry, that makes
us like ourselves so well, the feeling of continued identity.
The impressions of Mr. Moore's poetry are detached,
desultory, and physical. Its gorgeous colours brighten
and fade like the rainbow's. Its sweetness evaporates
like the effluvia exhaled from beds of flowers ! His gay,
laughing style, which relates to the immediate pleasures
of love or wine, is better than his sentimental and romantic
vein. His Irish melodies are not free frop affectation
and a certain sickliness of pretension. His serious de-
scriptions are apt to run into flowery tenderness. His
pathos sometimes melts into a mawkish sensibility, or crys-
tallises into all the prettinesses of allegorical language,
and glittering hardness of external imagery. But he has
wit at will, and of the first quality. His satirical and
burlesque poetry is his best : it is first-rate. His Two-
penny Post-Bag is a perfect " nest of spioery," where the
Cayenne is not spared. The politician there sharpens tho

202 TJie English Pods.

poet's pen. In this, too, our bard resembles the bee : he
has its honey and its sting.

Mr. Moore ought not to have written Lalla Eookh,
even for three thousand guineas. His fame is worth more
than that. He should have minded the advice of Fadla-
deen. It is not, however, a failure, so much as an evasion
and a consequent disappointment of public expectation.
He should have left it to others to break conventions with
nations, and faith with the world. He should, at any
rate, have kept his with the public. Lalla Eookh is not
what people wanted to see whether Mr. Moore could do ;
namely, whether he could write a long epic poem. It is
four short tales. The interest, however, is often high-
wrought and tragic, but the execution still turns to the
effeminate and voluptuous side. Fortitude of mind is the
first requisite of a tragic or epic writer. Happiness of
nature and felicity of genius are the pre-eminent char-
acteristics of the bard of Erin. If he is not perfectly
contented with what he is, all the world beside is. He
had no temptation to risk anything in adding to the love
and admiration of his age, and more than one country :

" Therefore to be possessed with double pomp,
To guard a title that was rich before.
To gild refined gold, to paint the lily,
To throw a peif ame on the violet,
To smooth the ice, or add another hue
Unto the rainbow, or with taper-light
To seek the beauteous eye of heav n to garnish,
Is wasteful and ridiculous excess."*

The same might be said of Mr. Moore's seeking to bind an
epic crown, or the shadow of one, round his other laurels.
If Mr. Moore has not suffered enough personally. Lord
Byron (judging from the tone of his writings) might be
thought to have suffered too much to be a truly great poet.
If Mr. Moore lays himself too open to all the various
impulses of things, the outward shows of earth and sky,

. ♦ " King John,'* iv. 2 (Dyoe's 2nd edit, of Shakspeare, iv. 50.)— Ed.

On Byron. 203

to every breath that blows, to every stray sentiment that
crosses his fancy — Lord Byron shuts himself up too much '\
in the impenetrable gloom of his own thoughts, and buries 1
the natural light of things in "nook monastic." The \
Giaour, the Corsair, Childe Harold, are all the same |
person, and they are apparently all himself. The ever-
lasting repetition of one subject, the same dark ground of
fiction, with the darker colours of the poet's mind spread
over it, the unceasing accumulation of horrors on horror's
head, steels the mind against the sense of pain, as inevit-
ably as the unwearied Siren sounds and luxurious mono-
tony of Mr. Moore's poetry make it inaccessible to
pleasure. Lord Byron's poetry is as morbid as Mr.
Moore's is careless and dissipated. He has more depth of
passion, more force and impetuosity, but the passion is
always of the same unaccountable character, at once
violent and sullen, fierce and gloomy. It is not the ■
passion of a mind struggling with misfortune, or the j
hopelessness of its desires, but of a mind preying upon |
itself, and disgusted with, or indifferent to, all other things. I
There is nothing less poetical than this sort of unaccom-
modating selfishness. There is nothing more repulsive
than this sort of ideal absorption of all the interests of
others, of the good and ills of life, in the ruling passion
and moody abstraction of a single mind, as if it would
make itself the centre of the universe, and there was
nothing worth cherishing but its intellectual diseases.
It is like a cancer eating into the heart of poetry. But
still there is power ; and power rivets attention and forces
admiration. ** He hath a demon :" and that is the next
thing to being full of the God. His brow collects the
scattered gloom : his eye flashes livid fire that withers and
consumes. But still we watch the progress of the scathing
bolt with interest, and mark the ruin it leaves behind with
awe. Within the contracted range of his imagination, he
has great unity and truth of keeping. He chooses

\

204 The English Pods.

elements and agents congenial to his mind, the dark and
guttering ocean, the fraU bark hurrying before the storm,
pirates and men that "house on the wild sea with wild
usages." He gives the tumultuous eagerness of action
and the fixed despair of thought. In yigour of style and
force of conception, he in one sense surpasses every
writer of the present day. His indignant apothegms are
like oracles of misanthropy. He who wishes for '^ a curse
to kill with," may find it in Lord Byron's writings. Yet
he has beauty lurking underneath his strength, tenderness
sometimes joined with the phrensy of despair. A flash of
golden light sometimes follows from a stroke of his pencil,
like a falling meteor. The flowers that adorn his poetry
bloom over charnel-houses and the grave I

There is one subject on which Lord Byron is fond of
writing on whichJjodLhe^wouldnot write— Bonaparte.
Not that I quarrel with his writing for him, or against
him, but with his writing both for him and against him.
What right has he to do this? Bonaparte's character,
be it what else it may, does not change every hour accord-
ing to his Lordship's varying humour. He is not a pipe
for fortune's finger, or for his Lordship's Muse, to play
what stop she pleases on. Why should Lord Byron now
laud him to the skies in the hour of his success, and then
peevishly wreak his disappointment on the God of his
idolatry? The man he writes of does not rise or fall
with circumstances, but " looks on tempests and is never
shaken." Besides, he is a subject for history, and not for
poetry :

*' Great princes' favourites their fair leaves spread.

But as the marigold at the sun's eye,
And in themselves their pride lies buried ;

For at a frown they in their glory die.
The painful warrior, famoused for fight,

After a thousand victories once foil'd,
Is from the book of honour razed quite,

And all the rest forgot for which he toil'd."

On Scott. 205

If Lord Byron will write anything more on this hazardous
theme, let him take these lines of Shakspeare for his
guide, and finish them in the spirit of the original : they
will then be worthy of the subject.

Walter Scott is the most popular of all the poets of the
present day, and deservedly so. He describes that which
is most easily and generally understood with more vivacity
and effect than anybody else. He has no excellences,
either of a lofty or recondite kind, which lie beyond the
reach of the most ordinary capacity to find out; but he
has all the good qualities which all the world agree to
understand. His style is clear, flowing, and transparent :
his sentiments, of which his style is an easy and natural
medium, are common to him with his readers. He has
none of Mr. Wordsworth's idiosyncracy. He differs from
his readers only in a greater range of knowledge and
facility of expression. His poetry belongs to the class of
improvisatore poetry. It has neither depth, height, nor
breadth in it ; neither uncommon strength, nor uncommon
refinement of thought, sentiment, or language. It has no
originality. But if this author has no research, no moving
power in his own breast, he relies with the greater safety
and success on the force of his subject. He selects a story
such as is sure to please, full of incidents, characters,
peculiar manners, costume, and scenery : and he tells it in
a way that can offend no one. He never wearies or dis-
appoints you. He is communicative and garrulous ; but
he is not his own hero. He never obtrudes himself on
your notice to prevent your seeing the subject. What
passes in the poem, passes much as it would have done in
reality. The author has little or nothing to do with it
Mr. Scott has great intuitive power of fancy, great vivid-
ness of pencil in placing external objects and events
before the eye. The force of his mind is picturesque, f
rather than moral. He gives more of the features of
nature than the soul of passion. He conveys the distinct

206 The English Poets.

ontlines and visible changes in outward objects, rather
than '' their mortal conseqnences." He is very inferior to
Lord Byron in intense passion, to Moore in delightfnj.
fancy, to Mr. Wordsworth in profound sentiment ; but he
has more picturesque power than any of them ; that is, he
places the objects themselves, about which they might feel
and think, in a much more striking point of view, with
greater variety of dress and attitude, and with more local
truth of colouring. His imagery is Gothic and grotesque.
The manners and actions have the interest and curiosity
belonging to a wild country and a distant period of time.
Few descriptions have a more complete reality, a more
striking appearance of life and motion, than that of the
warriors in the Lady of the Lake, who start up at the
command of Bhoderic Dhu from their concealment under
the fern, and disappear again in an instant. The Lay of
the Last Minstrel and Marmion are the first, and perhaps
the best of his works. The Goblin Page in the first of
these is a very interesting and inscrutable little personage.
Li reading these poems, I confess I am a little disconcerted,
in turning over the page, to find lli^r. Westall's pictures,
which always seem faC'SimUes of the persons represented,
with ancient costume and a theatrical air. This may be a
compliment to Mr. Westall, but it is not one to Walter
Scott. The truth is, there is a modem air in the midst of
the antiquarian research of Mr. Scott's poetry. It is
history or tradition in masquerade. Not only the crust of
old words and images is worn off with time, — the substance
is grown comparatively light and worthless. The forms
are old and uncouth; but the spirit is effeminate and
frivolous. This is a deduction from the praise I have
given to his pencil for extreme fidelity, though it has been
no obstacle to its drawing-room success. He has just hit
the town between the romantic and the fashionable, and
between the two secured all classes of readers on his side.
Li a word, I conceive that he is to the great poet what an

On Wordsworth. 207

excellent mimic is to a great actor. There is no deter-
minate impression left on the mind by reading his poetry.
It has no results. The reader rises up from the perusal
with new images and associations, but he remains the same
man that he was before. A great mind is one that moulds
the minds of others. Mr. Scott has put the Border
Minstrelsy and scattered traditions of the country into
easy, animated yerse. But the Notes to his poems are just
as entertaining as the poems themselves, and his poems
are only entertaining.

Mr. Wordsworth is the most original poet now living.
He is the reverse of Walter Scott in his defects and
excellences. He has nearly all that the other wants, and
wants all that the other possesses. His poetry is not
external, but internal ; it does not depend upon tradition,
or story, or old song ; he furnishes it from his own mind,
and is his own subject. He is the poet of mere sentiment.
Of many of the Lyrical Ballads, it is not possible to speak
in terms of too high praise, such as Hart-leap Well, the
Banks of the Wye, Poor Susan, parts of the Leech-
gatherer, the Lines to a Cuckoo, to a Daisy, the Complaint,
several of the Sonnets, and a hundred others of inconceiv-
able beauty, of perfect originality and pathos. They open
a finer and deeper vein of thought and feeling than any
poet in modem times has done, or attempted. He has
produced a deeper impression, and on a smaller circle,
than any other of his contemporaries. His powers have
been mistaken by the age, nor does he exactly understand
them himself. He cannot form a whole. He has not the
constructive faculty. He can give only the fine tones of
thought, drawn from his mind by accident or nature, like
the sounds drawn from the iBolian harp by the wandering
gale. He is totally deficient in all the machinery of
poetry. His Excursion, taken as a whole, notwithstanding
the noble materials thrown away in it, is a proof of this.
The line labours, the sentiment moves slow ; but the poem

208 The English Pods.

stands stock-still. The reader makes no way from the
first line to the last. It is more than anything in the
world like Bobinson Crusoe's boat, which would have
been an excellent good boat, and would have carried him
to the other side of the globe, but that he could not get it
out of the sand where it stuck fast. I did what little I
could to help to launch it at the time, but it would not
do. I am not, howeyer, one of those who laugh at the
attempts or failures of men of genius. It is not my way
to cry, " Long life to the conqueror 1" Success and desert
are not with me synonymous terms; and the less Mr.
Wordsworth's general merits have been understood, the
more necessary is it to insist upon them. This is not the
place to repeat what I have already said on the subject.
The reader may turn to it in the " Bound Table." I do
not think, however, there is anything in the larger poem
equal to many of the detached pieces in the Lyrical
Ballads. As Mr. Wordsworth's poems have been little
known to the public, or chiefly through garbled extracts
from them, I will here give an entire poem (one that has
always been a favourite with me), that the reader may
know what it is that the admirers of this author find to
be delighted with in his poetry. Those who do not feel
the beauty and the force of it, may save themselves the
trouble of inquiring further :

HAET-LEAP WELL.*

** The knight had ridden down from Wensley moor
With the slow motion of a smnmer's cloud ;
He turned aside towards a vassal's door,
And, * Bring another horse I* he cried aloud.

« Another horse !' — That shout the vassal heard,
And saddled his best steed, a comely gray ;
Sir Walter mounted him ; he was the third
Which he had mounted on that glorious day.

m^^^t . -■■■ I .M . ■ .. — MM M^

* 1817,11.95-112.— Ed.

On Wordsworth. 209

Joy sparkled in the prancing courser's eyes :

The horse and horseman are a happy pair ;
But, thou;^h Sir Walter like a falcon lliesi

There is a doieful silence in the air.

A rout this morning left Sir Walter's hall.

That as they gallope^l made the echoes roar;
But horse and man are vanished, onq and all ;

Such race, I th.nk, was never seen before.

Sir Walter, restless as a veering wind.

Calls to the few tired dogs that yet remain :
Brach, Swift, and Music, noblest of their kind,

Follow, and up the weary mountain strain.

The knight hallooed, he chid and cheered them on
With suppliant gestures and upbraidings stem ;

But breath and eyesight fail ; and, one by one.
The dogs are stretched among the mountain fern*

Where is the throng, the tumult of the race ?

The bugles that so joyfully were blown ?
•^This chase it looks not like an earthly chase ;

Sir Walter and the hart are left alone.

The poor hart toils along the mountain side ;

I will not stop to tell how far he fled.
Nor will I mention by wh.it death he died ;

But now the knight beholds him lying dead.

Dismounting then, he leaned against a thorn ;

He had no follower, doi?, nor man, nor boy :
He neither smacked his whip, nor blew hio horn.

But gazed upon the spoil with silent joy.

Cloee to the thorn on which Sir Walter leaned,

Stood his dumb pai-tuer in th<s glorious net ;
Weak as a lamb the hour that it is yeaned,

And foaming like a mountain cataract.

Upon his side the hart was lying stretched :
His nose half-tou^-he 1 a sprin^j: beneath a hill.

And with the 1 st deep irroan his breath had fetched
The waters of the spiing were trembling still.

P

210 TJie English Poets.

And now, too happy for repose or rest,

(Was never man in such a joyful case 1)
Sir Walter walked all round, north, south, and west.

And gazed, and gazed upon that dariing place.

And climbing up the hill (it was at least

Nine roods of sheer ascent :■ Sir Walter found,
Three several hoof-marks which the hunted beast

Had left imprinted on the verdant ground.

Sir Walter wiped his face and cried, • Till now

Such sight was never seen by living eyes :
Three leaps have borne him from this lofty brow,

Down to the very fountain where he lies.

ril build a pleasure-house upon this spot,

And a small arbour, made for rural joy ;
'Twill be the traveller's shed, the pQgrim's'Cot,

A place of love for damsels that are coy.

A cunning artist will I have to frame

A bason for that fountain in the dell ; \

And they, who do make mention of the same

From this day forth, shall call it Habt-leap Well.

And, gallant brute I to make thy praises known

Another monument shall here be raised ;
Three several pillars, each a rough-hewn stone.

And planted where thy hoofs the turf have graznd. i|

And, in the summer-time when days are long,

I will come hither with my paramour ;
And with the dancers, and the minstrel's song,

We will make merry in that pleasant bower.

Till the foundations of the mountains fail.

My mansion with its arbour shall endure i^"
The joy of them who till the fields of Swale,

And them who dwell among the woods of Ure t*

Then home he went, and left the hart, stone-dead.
With breathless nostrils stretched above the spring.

-— SooL did the knight perform what he had said,
And far and wide the fame thereof did ring.

On Wordsworth, 211

Ere thrice the moon into her port hnd eteered,

A cup of stone received the living well;
Three pillars of rude stone Sir Walter reared.

And built a house of pleasure in the dell.

And near the fountain, flowers of stature tall

With trailing plants and trees were intertwined,—

Which soon composed a little sylvan hall,
A leafy shelter from the sun and wind.

And thither, when the summer-days were long.

Sir Walter journeyed with his paramour ;
And with the dancers and the minstrel's song

Made merriment within that pleasant bower.

The kniglit. Sir Walter, died in course of time«

And his bones lie in his paternal vale. —
But there is matter for a second rhyme,

And I to this would add another tale."

PART THE SECOND.

•* The moving accident is not my trade :

To freeze the blood I have no ready arts :
'TIS my delight, alone in summer shade,
To pipe a simple song for thinking hearts.

As I from Hawes to Bichmond did repair,
It chanced that I saw standing in a dell

Three nspens at three corners of a square,
And one, not four yards distant, near a welL

What this imported I could ill divine :
And, pulling now the rein my horse to stop,

I saw three pillars standing in a line,
The last stone pillar on a dark hill-top.

The trees were gray, with neither arms nor head
Half-wasted the square mound of tawny green ;

So that you just might s ly, as then I said,
* Here in old time the hand of man hath been.

I looked upon the hill both far and near,
More doleful place did never eye survey ;

It seemed as if the spring-time came not here,
And Nature here were willing to decay.

212 The English Pods.

I stood in various thoughts and fancies lost,

When one, who was in bhepherd's gurb attired*
Game up the hollow : — Him did I accost,

And what this place might be I then inquired.

The shepherd stopped, an 1 that same story told

Which in my foimer rhyme I have rehearsed.
* A jolly pl.ce," tail ho, * in t.mes of old 1

But something ails it now ; the spot is curst.

Ilou see these lifeless stumps of aspen wood —

8omo suy th it they are \ eeches, others elms —
These were the bower ; and fere a mansion stood.

The finest palace of a hundred realms !

The arbour does its own condition tell ;

You see the stones, the fouutuin, and the stream;
But as to the great lod^e ! you migl.t as well

Hunt half a day lor a forgotten dream.

There's neither dog nor heifer, norse nor sheep^

Will wet his lips with.n thai cup of stone ; {

And oftentimes, when hU are fast asleep.

This water doth send forth a dolorous groan.

i

Some say that here a murder has been done,

And bL>od cries out for blood : but, for my part,
I've guessed, when I've been sitting in the sun.

That it was all for that unhappy hart. ^

What thoughts must through the creature's brain have passed t

Even from the topmost stune, upon the steep,
Are but thiee bounds— and look. Sir, at this last —

— O Maater ! it has been a cruel leap.

For thirteen hours he ran a desperate race ;

And in my simple mind we cannot tell
What cause the liart might have to love this place, I

And come and make his d^ath-bed near the welL

Here on the grass perhaps asleep he sank, ^

Lulled by this fountain in the summer- tide ;
This water was perhaps the first he drank

When he wandered from his mother's side.

On Wordsworth. 213

In April here beneath the scented thorn

He he&rd the birds their morning carols eing ;

And he, perhaps, for aught we know, was bom
Not half a fnrlong from that self-same spring.

But now here's neither grass nor pleasant shade ;

The sun on drearier hollow never shone ;
So will it be, as I have often said,

Till trees, and stones, and fountain all are gone.'

* Grey-headed Shepherd, thou hast spoken well ;

Small difference lies between thy creed and mine :
This beast not unobserved by Nature fell ;
His death was mourned by sympathy divine.

The Being, that is in the clouds and air,

That is in the green leaves among the groves,

Maintains a deep and reverential care
For the unoffending: creatures whom he loves.

*t3

The pleasure-house is dust : — behind, before.
This is no common waste, no common gloom ;

But Nature, in due course of time, once more
Shall here put on her beauty and her bloom.

She leaves these objects to a slow decay.

That what we are, and have been, may be known ;

But at the coming of the milder day,
These monuments shall all be overgrown.

One lesson. Shepherd, let us two divide.
Taught both by what she shows, and what conceals,

Never to blend our pleasure or our pi ide

With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels.* "

Mr. Wordsworth is at the head of that which has been
denominated the Lake school of poetry ; a school which,
with all my respect for it, I do not think sacred from
criticism or exempt from faults, of some of which faults
I shall speak with becoming frankness ; for I do not see
that the liberty of the press ought to be shackled, or
freedom of speech curtailed, to screen either its revolu-
tionary or renegade extravagances. This school of poetry
had its origin in the French revolution, or rather in those

214 The English Pods.

sentiments and opinions which prodnceil that revolntion ;
and which sentiments and opinions were directly imported
into this country in translations from the German abont
that period. Onr poetical literature had, towards the close
of the last century, degenerated into the most trite, insipid,
and mechanical of all things, in the hands of the followers
of Pope and the old French school of poetry. It wanted
something to stir it up, and it found that something in the
principles and events of the French revolution. From
the impulse it thus received, it rose at once from the
most servile imitation and tamest commonplace, to the
utmost pitch of singularity and paradox. The change
in the belles-lettres was as complete, and to many persons
as startling, as the change in politics, with which it went
hand in hand. There was a mighty ferment in the heads
of statesmen and poets, kings and people. According to
the prevailing notions, all was to be natural and new.
Nothing that was established was to be tolerated. All
the commonplace figures of poetry, tropes, allegories,
personifications, with the whole heathen mythology, were
instantly discarded ; a classical allusion was considered as
a piece of antiquated foppery; capital letters were no
more allowed in print, than letters-patent of nobility were
permitted in real life ; kings and queens were dethroned
from their rank and station in legitimate tragedy or epio
poetry, as they were decapitated elsewhere : rhyme was
looked upon as a relic of the feudal system, and regular
metre was abolished along with regular government. Au-
thority and fashion, elegance or arrangement, were hooted
out of countenance as pedantry and prejudice. Every
one did that which was good in his own eyes. The
object was to reduce all things to an absolute level ; an(
a singularly affected and outrageous simplicity prevailed"
in dress and manners, in style and sentiment. A striking
effect produced where it was least expected, something
new and original^ no matter whether good, bad, or indif-

The Lake School. 215

fereni, whether mean or lofty, extravagant or childish,
was all that was aimed at, or considered as compatible
with sound philosophy and an age of reason. The licen-
tiousness grew extreme : Coryate's Crudities* were nothing
to it. The world was to be turned topsy-turvy ; and
poetry, by tho good-will of Adam-wits, was to share its
fate and begin de novo. It was a time of promise, a re-
newal of the world and ofTettefsT and tha Deucalions,
who were paicTto perform this feat of regeneration^ WQTfi
t^ present poet-laureate and the two authors . pf _ the
Lyrical Ballads.! The Oermans, who made heroes of
roBB^ers, and honest women of cast-off mistresses, had
already 'exhausted the extravagant and marvellous in
sentiment and situation ; our native writers adopted a
wonderful simpl icity of style and matter. The paradox

-^tEeysetout with was, that all things are by nature equally
fit subjects for poetry ; or that if there is any preference
to be given, those that are the meanest and most n npro -
mising are the best, as they leave the greatest ^cope^xor
the unbounded stores or thought and fancy i&..th» wnter's

^ own mind. Poetry Itad with them ** neither buttress
nor coigne^of vantage to make its pendant bed and
procreant cradle." It was not " born so high : its aiery
buildeth in the cedar's top, and dallies with the wind, aud
scorns the sun." It grew like a mushroom out of the
ground, or was hidden in it like a truffle, which it re-
quired a particular sagacity and industry to find out and
dig up. "^ey founded ttie new school on34udxi£i|iLQ.^
sh eer human ity," on pure nature voiff of art. It could not
be said of these sweeping reformers and dictators in the

* A singular book of travels in various countries, printed in 1611.
I do not know, however, that it is to be charged with any special
licentiousness, unless it is where the author furnishes an account of
his interview with a Venetian courtesan, accompanied by an illus-
tration of the incident, both harmless enough, to be sure. — Ed.

t Southey, Wordsworth himself, and Coleridge. The I/yricol
BaUads were published iu ITJS.—Ed,

216 The English Pods.

republic of letters, tbat ''in their train ' walked crowns
and crownets ; that realms and islands, like plates, dropt
from their pockets :" but they were surrounded, in com-
pany with the Muses, by a mixed rabble of idle apprentices
and Botany Bay convicts, female yagi*ants, gypsies, meek
daughters in the family of Christ, ot idiot boys and mad
mothers, and after them '*owls and night-ravens flew."
They scorned "degrees, priority, and place, insisture,
course, proportion, season, form, office, and custom in all
line of order :" the distinctions of birth, the vicissitudes
of fortune, did not enter into their abstracted, lofty, and
levelling calculation of human nature. He who was more
than man, with them was none. They claimed kindred
only with the commonest of the people : peasants, pedlars,
and village barbers were their oracles and bosom friends.
Their poetry, in the extreme to which it professedly
tended and was in effect carried, levels all distinctions of
nature and society; has ''no figures nor no fantasies"
which the prejudices of superstition or the customs of the
world draw in the brains of men ; " no trivial fond re-
cords " of all that has existed in the history of past ages ;
it has no adventitious pride, pomp, or circumstances, to
set it off: " the marshal's truncheon, nor the judge's robe :"
neither tradition, reverence, nor ceremony " that to great
ones 'longs :" it breaks in pieces the golden images of
poetry, and defaces its armorial bearings, to melt them
down in the mould of common humanity or of its own
upstart self-sufficiency. They took the same method in
their new-fangled *' metre ballad-mongering " scheme
which Bousseau did in his prose paradoxes, of exciting
attention by reversing the established standards of opinion
and estimation in the world. They were for bringing
poetry back to its primitive simplicity and state of nature,
as he was for bringing society back to the savage 'State :
so that the only thing remarkable left in the world by this
change would be the persons who had produced it. A

>.:^

Tlie Lake School 217

thorough adept in this school of poetry and philanthropy
is jealous of all excellence but his own. He does not even
like to share his reputation with his subject ; for he would
have it all proceed from his own power and originality of
mind. Such a one is slow to admire anything that is
admirable, feels no interest in what is most interesting
to others, no grandeur in anything grand, no beauty in
anything beautiful. He tolerates only what he himself
creates ; he sympathises only with what can enter into no
competition with him, with " the bare trees and mountains
bare, and grass in the green field." He sees nothing but
himself and the universe. He hates all greatness and all
pretensions to it, whether well or ill founded. His egotism
is in some respects a madness ; for he scorns even the
admiration of himself, thinking it a presumption in any
one to suppose that he has taste or sense enough to under-
stand him. He hates all science and all art ; he hates
chemistry ; he hates conchology ; he hates Voltaire ; he
hates Sir Isaac Newton ; he hates wisdom ; he hates wit ;
he hates metaphysics, which he says are unintelligible,
and yet he would be thought to understand them; he
hates prose ; he hates all poetry but his own ; he hates
the dialogues in Shakspeare; he hates music, dancing,
and painting ; he hates Bubens ; he hates Eembrandt ; he
hates Eaphael ; he hates Titian ; he hates Vandyke ; he
hates the antique ; he hates the Apollo Belvidere ; he
hates the Venus of Medicis. This is the reason that so
few people take an interest in his writings, because he
takes an interest in nothing that others do ! The effect
has been perceived as something odd ; but the cause or
principle has never been distinctly traced to its source
before, as far as I know. The proofs are to bo found
everywhere: in Mr. Southey's Botany Bay Eclogues, in
his book of Songs and Sonnets, his Odes and Inscriptions
so well parodied in the Anti-Jacobin Eeview, in his Joan
of Arc, and last, though not least, in his Wat Tyler :

218 The English Pods,

" When Adam delved, and Eve span.
Where was then the gentleman ? *

(or the poet laureate either, we may ask?) — ^in Mr.
Coleridge's Ode to an Ass's Foal, in his lines to Sarah, his
Heligious Musings; and in his and Mr. Wordsworth's
Lyrical Ballads, pdssim.

Of Mr. Sonthey's larger epics, I have but a faint recol-
lection at this distance of time, but all that I remember of
them is mechanical and extravagant, heavy and superficial*
His affected, disjointed style is well imitated in the Ee-
jected Addresses. The difference between him and Sir
Eichard Blackmore seems to be, that the one is heavy and
the other light, the one solemn and the other pragmatical,
the one phlegmatic and the other flippant ; and that there
is no Gay in the present time to give a Catalogue Eaisonne
of the performances of the living undertaker of epics.
Eehama is a loose sprawling figure, such as we see cut out
of wood or paper, and pulled or jerked with wire or thread,
to make sudden and surprising motions without meaning,
grace, or nature in them. By far the best of his works
are some of his shorter personal compositions, in which
there is an ironical mixture of the quaint and serious, such
as his lines on a picture of Gaspar Foussin, the fine tale
of Gualberto, his Description of a Pig, and the Holly Tree,
which is an affecting, beautiful, and modest retrospect on
his own character. May the aspirations with which it
concludes be fulfilled !* But the little he has done of true

* " O reader ! hast thou ever stood to see
The Holly Tree?
The eye that contemplates it well perceives *

Its glossy leaves,
Ordered by an intelligence so wise
'As might confound the Atheist's sophistries.

Below, a circling fence, Its leaves are seen
Wrinkled and keen ;

On Smthey. 219

and sterling excellence, is overloaded by the quantity of
indifferent matter which he turns out every year, ^' prosing

No grazing cattle through their prickly round

Can reach to wound ;
But as they grow where nothing is to fear,
Smooth and unarmed the pointless leaves appear.

I love to view these things with curious eyes,

And moralize ;
And in the wisdom of the Holly Tree

Can emblems see
Wherewith perchance to make a pleasant rhymie^
Such as may profit in the after time.

80, though abroad perchance I might appear

Harsh and austere,
To those who on my leisure would intrude

Reserved and rude.
Gentle at home amid my friends Fd be,
Like the high leaves upon the Holly Tree.

And should my youth, as youth is apt I know,

Some harshness show.
All vain asperities I day by day

Would wear away.
Till the smooth temper of my age should be
Like the high leaves upon the Holly Tree.

And as when all the summer trees are seen

So bright and green.
The Holly leaves their fadeless hues display

Less bright than they.
But when the bare and wintry woods we see,
What then so cheerful as the Holly Tree ?

80 serious should my youth appear among

The thoughtless throng,
80 would I seem amid the young and gay

More grave than they.
That in my age as cheerful I might be
As the green winter of the Holly Tree/

n

or versing,'' with equally mechanical and irresistible
facility. His Essays, or political and moral disquisitions,

220 TJie English Pods.

are not so full of original matter as Montaigne's. They
are second or third rate compositionu in that class.

It remains that I should Siiy a few words of Mr. Cole-
ridge ; and there is no one who has a better right to say
what he thinks of him than I have. . ^^ Is there here any
dear friend of Caesar ? To him I say, that Brutus' love
to Caosar was no less than his." But no matter. His
Ancient Mariner is his niost remarkable performance, and
the only one that I could point out to any one as giving
an adequate idea of his great natural powers. It is high
Crerman, however, and in it he seems to "conceive of
poetry but as a drunken dream, reckless, careless, and
heedless of past, present, and to come." His tragedies
(for he has written two) are not answerable to it ; they
are, excei)t a few poetical passages, drawling sentiment
and metaphysical jargon. He has no genuine dramatic
talent. There is one fine passage in his Christabel, that
which contains the description of the quarrel between Sir
Leoline and Sir Eoland de Vaux of Tryermaine, who had
been friends in youth :

" Alas I they had been friends in youth,
But whispering tongues can poison truth ;
And constancy lives in realms above :
And life is thorny ; and youth is vain ;
And to be wroth with one we love,
Doth work like madness in the brain ;
And thus it ehanc'd as I divine,
With Roland and Sir Leoline.
Each spake words of high di-dain
And insult to his heart's best brother.
And parted ne'er to meet again !
But neither ever found another
To free the hollow heart from paining —

They stood aloof, the scars remaining,
Like cliffs which had been rent asunder :
A dreary sea now floats between,
But neither heat, nor frost, nor thunder.
Shall wholly do away I ween
The marks of that which ouce hath been.

^^

On Coleridge. 221

Sir Leoline a moment's space
Stood gazing on the damsel's face ;
And the youthful lord of Tryermaine
Game back upon his heajrt again."

It miglit seem insidious if I were to praise bis ode entitled
Fire, Famine, and Slaughter, as an effusion of high poetical
enthusiasm and strong political feeling. His Sonnet to
Schiller conveys a fine compliment to the author of the
Bobbers, and an equally fine idea of the state of youthful
enthusiasm in which he composed it :

" Schiller 1 that hour I would have wish*d to die,
If through the shudd'ring midnight I had sent
From the dark dungeon of the tower time-rent,
That fearful voice, a famish'd father's cry —

That in no after moment aught less vast

Might stamp me mortal ! A triumphant shout
Black Horror scream'd, and all her goblin rout,

From the more withering scene din^iinlsh'd pass'd.

Ah ! Bard tremendous in sublimity I
Could I behold thee in thy loftier mood,

Wand'ring at eve, with finely frenzied eye.
Beneath some vast old tempest-swinging wood I
Awhile, with mute awe gazing, I would brood,

Then weep aloud in a wild ecbtacy 1"

His Condones ad Populum, Watchman, &c., are dreary j
trash. Of his Friend, I have spoken the truth elsewhere. /
But I may say of him here, that he is the only person I •
ever knew who answered to the idea of a man of genius.
He is the only person from whom I ever learnt anything.
There is only one thing he could learn from me in return,
but tliat he has not. He was the first poet I ever knew. .
His genius at that time [1798]* had angelic wings, and fed
on manna. He talked on for ever ; and you wished him
to talk on for ever. His thoughts did not seem to come
with labour and effort, but as if borne on the gusts of '

* See Memoirs of William Hazliltf 1867, chaps, iii.-v. — Ed.

222 Tlie English Poets.

genius, and as if the wings of his imagination lifted him
&om off his feet. His voice rolled on the ear like the
^J)ealing organ, and its sound alone was the music of
thought. His mind was clothed with wiugs ; and raised
on them, he lifted philosophy to heaven. In his descrip-
tions, you then saw the progress of human happiness and
liberty in bright and never-ending succession, like the
steps of Jacob's Ladder, with airy shapes ascending and
descending, and with the voice of God at the top of the
ladder. And shall I, who heard him then, listen to him

now ? Not II That spell is broken ; that time is

gone for ever ; that voice is heard no more : but still the
recollection comes rushing by with thoughts of long-past
years, and rings in my ears with never-dying sound :

** What though the radiance which was once so bright

Be now for ever taken from my sight —
* Though nothing can bring back the hour

Of glory in the grass, of splendour in the floVr ?

I do not grieve, but rather find

Strength in what remains behind ;

In the primal sympathy,

"Which having been, must ever be ;

In the soothing thoughts that spring

Out of human suffering ;
In years that bring the philosophic mind !"

I have thus gone through the task I intended, and have
come at last to the level ground. I have felt my subject
gradually sinking from under me as 1 advanced, and have
been afraid of ending in nothing. The interest has un-
avoidably decreased at almost every successive step of the
progress, like a play that has its catastrophe in the first or
second act. This, however, I could not help. I havo
done as well as I could.

• LONDON: PBINTSD BT WII.LTAM CLOWES AND 60NS, SIAXFOBD ST&BET

AND CHAIUKQ CttOGfr

THB

ENGLISH COMIC WEITEBS,

* •»•

LECTUKE I.— INTEODUCTORY.

X ON WIT AND HUMOUB. " '

Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps ; for he
is the only animal that is struck with the difference
between what things are, and what they ought to be.
We weep at what thwarts or exceeds our desires in serious
matters : we laugh at what only disappoints our expect-
ations in trifles. We shed tean^ from sympathy with
real and necessary distress ; as we burst into Ipn^bter
from want of sympathy with that which is imreasonable
and unnecessary, the absurdity of which provokes our
spleen or mirth, rather than any serious reflections on it.
To explain the nature of laughter and tears, is to
accoimt for the condition of human life ; for it is in a
manner compounded of these two I It is a tragedy or a
comedy — sad or merry, as it happens. The crimes and
misfortunes that are inseparable from it, shock and wound
the mind when they once seize upon it, and when tho
pressure can no longer be borne, seek relief in tears : the
follies and absurdities that men commit, or the odd
accidents that befal them, afford us amusement from tho
very rejection of these false claims upon our sympathy,

B

\

/

2 The English Comic Writers.

, and end in laughter. If everything that went wrong, if
every vanity or weakness in another gave us a sensible
pang, it would be hard indeed : but as long as the dis-
agreeableness of the consequences of a sudden disaster ig
kept out of sight by the immediate oddity of the cir-
cumstances, and the absurdity or unacoountableness of a
foolish action is the most striking thing in it, the ludicrous
prevails over the pathetic, and we receive pleasure instead
of pain from the fsux^e of life which is played before us,
and which discomposes our gravity as often as it Mis to
move our anger or our pity !

Tears may be considered as the natural and involuntary
resource of the mind overcome by some sudden and violent
f^ --^motion, before it has had time to reconcile its feelings
to the change of circumstances : while laughter may be
defined to be the same sort of convulsive and involuntary
movement, occasioned by mere surprise or contrast (in the
absence of any more serious emotion), before it has time
to reconcile its belief to contradictory appearances. If
we hold a mask before our face, and approach a child with
this disguise on, it will at first, from the oddity and in-
congituity of the appearance, be inclined to laugh ; if we
. ' ^^0 nearsi' to it, steadily, and without saying a word, it
will begin to be alarmed, and be half inclined to cry : if
we suddenly take off the mask, it will recover from its
fears, and burst out a-Iaughing ; but if, instead of present-
ing the old well-known countenance, we have concealed a
satyr's head or some frightful caricature behind the first
mask, the suddenness of the change will not in this case
'^ be a source of merriment to it, but will convert its sur-
' prise into an agony of consternation, and will make it
scream out for help, even though it may be convinced
that the whole is a trick at bottom.

The alternation of tears and laughter, in this little
episode in common life, depends almost entirely on the\
\ greater or less degree of interest attached to the different 1

WU and Humour . 3

changes of appearance. The mere suddenness of the
transition^ the mere banlMng our expectations, and turn-
ing them abruptly into another channel, seems to give addi-
tional liveliness and gaiety to the animal spirits ; but the
instant the change is not only sudden, but threatens
serious consequences, or calls up the shape of danger,
terror supersedes our disposition to mirth, and laughter
gives place to tears. It is usual to play with infants,
and make them laugh by clapping your hands suddenly
before them ; but if you clap your hands too loud, or too
near their sight, their countenances immediately change,
and they hide them in the nurse's arms. Or suppose the
same child grown up a little older, comes to a place,
expecting to meet a person it is particularly fond of,
and does not find that person there, its coimtenance
suddenly £ei11s, its lips begin to quiver, its cheek turns
pale, its eye glistens, and it vents its little sorrow (grown
too big to be concealed) in a flood of tears. Again, if the
child meets the same person unexpectedly after long
absence, the same effect will be produced by an excess of
joy, with different accompaniments ; that is, the surprise
and the emotion excited will make the blood come into
his face, his eyes sparkle, his tongue falter or be mute ;
bat in either case the tears will gush to his relief, and
•lighten the pressure about his heart. On the other hand,
if a child is playing at hide-and-seek or blindman's-buf^
with persons it is ever so fond of, and either misses them
where it had made sure of finding them, or suddenly runs
up against them where it had least expected it, the shock
or additional impetus given to the imagination by the
disappointment or the discovery, in a matter of this indif-
ferenoe, will only vent itself in a fit of laughter.* The

* A child that has hid Itself out of the way in sport, is under a
great temptation to laugh at the unconsciousDess of others as to its
situation. A person concealed from assassins is in no danger of
Jl>etra7]ng his situation by laughing.

B 2

4 The English Comic Writers.

transition here is not from one thing of importance to
another, or from a state of indifference to a state of strong
excitement ; but merely &om one impression to another
that we did not at all expect, and when we had expected
just the contrary. The mind having been led to form
a certain conclusion, and the result producing an
immediate solution of continuity in the chain of our ideas,
this alternate excitement and relaxation of the imagination,
the object also striking upon the mind more vividly in
its loose unsettled state, and before it has had time to
recover and collect itself, causes that alternate excite-
ment and relaxation, or irregular convulsive movement
of the muscular and nervous system, which constitutes
physical laughter. The disconiintums in our sensations
produces a correspondent jar and discord in the frame.
The steadiness of our faith and of our features begins
to give way at the same time. We turn with an incre-
dulous smile from a story that staggers our belief : and
we are ready to split our sides with laughing at an extra-
vagance that sets all common sense and serious concern
at defiance.

To understand or define tjip ludicrous, we must first
know what the serious is, | Now the serious is the
habitual stress which the mind lays upon the expectation
of a given order of events, following one another with
a certain regularity and weight of interest attached to
them. When this stress is increased beyond its usual
pitch of intensity, so as to overstrain the feelings by the
violent opposition of good to bad, or of objects to our
desires, it becomes the pathetic or tragical. The ludi-
crous, or comic, is the unexpected loosening or relaxing
this stress below its usual pitch of intensity, by such an
abrupt transposition of the order of our ideas, as taking
the mind unawares, throws it off its guard, startles it
into a lively sense of pleasure, and leaves no time nor
inclination for painful reflections. 1

Wit and Humour. 5

The essence of the laughable then is the incongruous, /
the disconnecting one idea from another, or the jostling J
of one feeling against another. The first and most
obvious cause of laughter is to be found in the simple
succession of events, as in the sudden shifting of a dis-
guise, or some unlooked-for accident, without any
absurdity of character or situation. The accidental con-
tradiction between our expectations and the event can
hardly be said, however, to amount to the ludicrous : it
is merely laughable. The ludicrous is where there ite|
the same contradiction between the object and our expect-
ations, heightened by some deformity or inconvenience,
that is, by its being contrary to what is customary or
desirable ; as the ridiculous, which is the highest degree
of the laughable, is that~which is contrary not only to
custom but to sense and reason, or is a voluntary departure
from what we have a right to expect &om those who are
conscious of absurdity and propriety in words, looks, and
actions.

Of these different kinds or degrees of the laughable,
f^f) firflf. \f\ the most shallow and short-lived; for the
instant the immediate surprise of a thing's merely hap-
pening one way or another is over, there is nothing to
throw us back upon our former expectation, and renew
our wonder at the event a second time. The segoai^sortj^
that is, the ludicrous arising out of the improbable or
distressing, is more deep and lasting, either because the
painful catastrophe excites a greater curiosity, or because
the old impression, from its habitual hold on the imagina-
tion, still recurs mechanically, so that it is longer before
we can seriously make up our minds to the unaccountable
deviation from it. The third sort , or the ridiculous
arising out of absurdity as well as improbability, that is,
where the defect or weakness is of a man's own seeking,
is the most refined of all, but not always so pleasant as
the last, because the same contempt and disapprobation

1

/

6 The English Carnie Writers.

which sharpens and subtilises onr sense of the impro-
priety, adds a severity to it inconsistent with perfect ease
and enjoyment. This last species is properly the pro-
vince of satire . The principle of contrast is, however,
the same in all the stages, in the simply laughable^ the
ludicrous, the ridiculous ; and the effect is only the more
complete, the more durably and pointedly this principle
operates.

To give some examples in these different kinds.
We laugh, when children, at the sudden removing of
a pasteboard mask; we laugh when grown up more
gravely at the tearing off the mask of deceit. We
laugh at absurdity; we laugh at deformity- We
laugh at a bottle-nose in a caricature; at a stuffed
figure of an alderman in a pantomime ; and at the tale
of Slaukenbergius. A giant standing by a dwarf makes
a contemptible figure enough. Eosinante and Dapple
are laughable from contrast, as their masters from the
same principle make two for a pair. We laugh at the
dress of foreigners, and they at ours. Three chimney-
sweeper§ meeting three Chinese in Lincoln*s-inn Fields,
they laughed at one another till they were ready to drop
down. Country people laugh at a person because they
never saw him before. Any one dressed in the height of
the fashion, or quite out of it, is equally an object of
ridicule. One rich source of the ludicrous is distress with,
which we cannot sympathize from its absurdity or in-
significance. Women laugh at their lovers. We laugh
at a damned author, in spite of our teeth, and though he
may be our friend. "There is something in the mis-
forttmes of our best friends that pleases us." We laugh
at people on the top of a stage-coach, or in it, if they
seem in great extremity. It is hard to hinder children
from laughing at a stammerer, at a negro, at a drunken
man, or even at a madman. We laugh at mischief.
We laugh at what we do not believe. We say that an

WU and Humour. 7

argnment or an assertion that is very absurd, is quite
ludicrous. We laugh to show our satisfaction with our-
selves, or our contempt for those about us, or to conceal our
envy or our ignorance. We laugh at fools, and at those
who pretend to be wise — at extreme simplicity, awkward-
ness, hypocrisy, and affectation. '' They were talking of
me," says Scrub, "for they laughed consumedly" Lord
Foppington's insensibility to ridicule, and airs of ine£GEtble
self-conceit, are no less admirable ; and Joseph Surface's
cant maxims of morality, when once disarmed of their
power to do hurt, become suficiently ludicrous. We
laugh at that in others which is a serious matter to our-
selves ; because our self-love is stronger than our sympathy,
sooner takes the alarm, and instantly turns our heedless
mirth into gravity, which only enhances the jest to others.
Some one is generally sure to be the sufferer by a joke.
What is sport to one, is death to another. It is only very
sensible or very honest people, who laugh as freely at
their own absurdities as at those of their neighbours. In
general the contrary rule holds, and we only laugh at
those misfortunes in which we are spectators, not sharers*
The injury, the disappointment, shame, and vexation that
we feel, put a stop to our mirth ; while the disasters that
come home to us, and excite our repugnance and dismay,
are an amusing spectacle to others. The greater resist-
ance we make, and the greater the perplexity into which
we are thrown, the more lively and piquant is the in-
tellectual display of cross-purposes to the bystanders.
Our humiliation is their triumph. We are occupied with
the disagreeableness of the result instead of its oddity or
unexpectedness. Others see only the conflict of motives,
and the sudden alternation of events ; we feel the pain as
well, which more than counterbalances the speculative
entertainment we might receive from the contemplation of
our abstract situation.

You cannot force people to laugh: you cannot give

8 The English Comic Writers.

a reason why they Bhould laugh : they must laugh of
themselves, or not at all. As we laugh from a spon-
taneous impulse, we laugh the more at any restraint upon
this impulse. We laugh at a thing merely because we
ought not. If we think we must not laugh, this perverse
impediment makes our temptation to laugh the greater ;
fbr by endeavouring to keep the obnoxious image out
of sight, it comes upon us more irresistibly and re-
peatedly; and the inclination to indulge our mirth, the
longer it is held back, collects its force, and breaks out
the more violently in peals of laughter. In like manner,
any thing we must not think of makes us laugh, by its
coming upon us by stealth and unawares, and from the
very efforts we make to exclude it. A secret, a loose
word, a wanton jest, make people laugh. Aretine laughed
himself to death at hearing a lascivious story. Wicked-
ness is often made a substitute for wit ; and in most of
our good old comedies, the intrigue of the plot and
the double meaning of the dialogue go hand-in-hand, and
keep up the ball with wonderful spirit between them.
The consciousness, however it may arise, that there is
something that we ought to look grave at, is almost
always a signal for laughing outright: we can hardly
keep our cotmtenance at a sermon, a faneral, or a
wedding. What an excellent old custom was that of
throwing the stocking ! What a deal of innocent mirth
has been spoiled by the disuse of it I It is not an easy
matter to preserve decorum in courts of justice. The
smallest circumstance that interferes with the solemnity
of the proceedings, throws the whole place into an uproar
of laughter. People at the point of death often say
smart things. Sir Thomas More jested with his exe-
cutioner. Eabelais and Wycherley both died with a
hon-mot in their mouths.

Misunderstandings (mal-entendus), where one person
means one thing, and another is aiming at something else^

'1

WU and Hmnour. 9

are another great source of comic humour, on the same
principle of ambiguity and contrast. There is a high-
wiiQUght instance of this in the dialogue between Aimwell
and Gibbet, in the * Beaux' Stratagem/ where Aimwell mis-
takes his companion for an of&cer in a marching regiment,
and Gibbet takes it for granted that the gentleman i&
a highwayman. The alarm and consternation occasioned
by some one saying to him, in the course of common con-
versation, " I apprehend you," is the most ludicrous thing
in that admirably natural and powerful performance,
Mr. Emery's ' Eobert Tyke.' Again, unconsciousness in
the person himself of what he is about, or of what others
think of him, is also a great heightener of the sense of
absurdity. It makes it come the fuller home upon us
from his insensibility to it. His simplicity sets off the
satire, and gives it a finer edge. It is a more extreme
case still where the person is aware of being the object
of ridicule, and yet seems perfectly reconciled to it as a
matter of course. So mtjfl oft^Ti tbft m^rfi forriblft and
pointed for being dry and serious, for it then seems as if
the speaker himself had no intention in it, and we were
the first to find it out. ^Irony^ as. a s^ecie^of wit^jpwes
its force to the same principle. In such cases it is the
contrast between the appearance and the reality, the sus-
pense of belief and the seeming incongrufty, that gives
point to the ridicule, and makes it enter the deeper when
the first impression is overcome. Excessive impudence,
as in the *• Liar ;' or excessive modesty, as in the hero of
^ She stoops to Conquer ;' or a mixture of ijhe two, as in
the ^'Busy Body,' are equally amusing./ Lying is a
species of wit and humour. To lay anything to a
person's charge from which he is perfectly free, shows
spirit and invention ; and the more incredible the efi&ontery,
the greater is the joke.

There is nothing more powerfully humorous than
what is called keeping in comic character, as we see it very

10 The English Comic Writers.

finely exemplified in Sancho Fanza and Don Qnizote.
The proverbial phlegm and the romantic gravity of these
two celebrated persons nmy be regarded as the height
•of this kind of excellence. I The deep feeling of character
strengthens the sense of the ludicrous. Keeping in comic
character is consistency in absurdity ; a determined and
laudable attachment to the incongruous and singular. The
regularity completes the contradiction ; for the number of
' instances of deviation from the right line, branching out
in all directions, shows the inveteracy of the original bias
to any extravagance or folly, the natural improbability, as
it were, increasing every time with the multiplication
of chances for a return to common sense, and in the end
mounting up to an incredible and unaccountably ridiculous
height, when we find our expectations as invariably
baffledj The most curious problem of all, is this truth of
absurdity to itself. That reason and good sense should
be consistent, is not wonderful: but that caprice, and
whim, and fantastical prejudice, should be uniform and
infallible in their results, is the surprising thing. But
while this characteristic clue to absurdity helps on the
ridicule, it also softens and harmonises its excesses ; and
the ludicrous is here blended with a certain beauty and
decorum, from this very truth of habit and sentiment, or
from the principle of similitude in dissimilitude. The
devotion to nonsense, and enthusiasm about trifies, is
highly affecting as a moral lesson : it is one of the
striking weaknesses and greatest happinesses of our
nature. That which excites so lively and lasting an
interest in itself, even though it should not be wisdom, is
not despicable in the sight of reason and humanity. We
cannot suppress the smile on the lip ; but the tear should
also stand ready to start from the eye. The iistory of
hobby-horses is equally instructive and delightful; and
after the pair I have just alluded to, My Uncle Toby's is
one of the best and gentlest that " ever lifted leg !" The

1

Wit and Hunumr. 11

inconveniences, odd accidents, falls, and bruises, to wbicli
they expose their riders, contribute their share to the
amusement of the spectators ; and the blows and wounds
that the Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance received in
his many perilous adventures, have applied their healing
influence to many a hurt mind. In what relates to the
laughable, as it arises from unforeseen accidents or self-
willed scrapes, the pain, the shame, the mortiflcation, and
utter helplessness of situation, add to the joke, provided
they are momentary, or overwhelming only to the imagi-
nation of the sufferer. Malvolio's punishment and appre-
hensions are as comic, from our knowing that they are
not real, as Christopher Sly's drunken transformation and
short-lived dream of happiness are for the like reason.
Parson Adams's fall into the tub at the 'Squire's, or his
being discovered in bed with Mrs. Slipslop, though
pitiable, are laughable accidents : nor do we read with
much gravity of the loss of his * ^schylus,' serious as it
was to him at the time. A Scotch clergyman, as he was
going to church, seeing a spruce conceited mechanic who
was walking before him, suddenly covered all over with
dirt, either by falling into the kennel, or by some other
calamity befalling him, smiled and passed on : but after-
wards seeing the same person, who had stopped to reflt,
seated directly facing him in the gallery, with a look of
perfect satisfaction and composure, as if nothing of the
sort had happened to him, the idea of his late disaster and
present self-complacency struck him so powerfully, that,
unable to resist the impulse, he flung himself back in the
pulpit, and laughed till he could laugh no longer. ' I re-
member reading a story in an odd number of the * European
Magazine,' of an old gentleman who used to walk out
every afternoon, with a gold-headed cane, in the fields
opposite Baltimore House, which were then open, only
with footpaths crossing them. He was frequently ac*
costed by a beggar with a wooden leg, to whom he gave

12 The English Comic Writers.

money, which only made him more importunate. One day,
when he was more troublesome than usual, a well-dressed
person happening to come up, and observing how saucy
the fellow was, said to the gentleman, " Sir, if you wiU
lend me your cane fo)r a moment, 1*11 give him a good
thrashing for his impertinence. '* The old gentleman,
smiling at the proposal, handed him his cane, which the
other no sooner was going to apply to the shoulders
of the culprit, than he immediately whipped off his
wooden leg, and scampered off with great alacrity, and
his chastiser after him as hard as he could go. The
faster the one ran, the faster the other followed him,
brandishing the cane, to tl\e great astonishment of the
gentleman who owned it, till having fairly crossed the
fields, they suddenly turned a comer, and nothing more was
seen of either of them.

In the way of mischievous adventure, and a wanton ex-
hibition of ludicrous weakness in character, nothing is
superior to the comic parts of the ' Arabian Nights' Enter-
tainments.' To take only the set of stories of the Little
Hunchback, who was choked with a bone, and the Barber
of Bagdad and his seven brothers, — there is that of the
tailor who was persecuted by the miller's wife, and who,
after toiling all night in the mill, got nothing for his
pains : — of another who fell in love with a fine lady who
pretended to return his passion, and inviting him to her
house, as the preliminary condition of her favour, had his
eyebrows shaved, his clothes stripped off, and being
turned loose into a ^vinding gallery, he was to follow her,
and by overtaking obtain all his wishes ; but, after a turn
or two, stumbled on a trap-door, and fell plump into the
street, to the great astonishment of the spectators and his
own, shorn of his eyebrows, naked, and without a ray of
hope left: that of the castle-building pedlar who, in
kicking his wife, the supposed daughter of an emperor,
kicks down his basket of glass, the brittle foundation of

Wit and Evmour, 13

liis ideal wealth, his good fortune, and his arrogance : —
that, again, of the beggar who dined with the Barmecide,
and feasted with him on the names of wines and dishes :
and, last and best of all, the inimitable story of the Im-
pertinent Barber himself, one of the seven, and worthy to
be so ; his pertinacious, incredible, teasing, deliberate, yet
immeaning folly, his wearing out the patience of the
young gentleman whom he is sent for to shave, his pre-
parations and his professions of speed, his taking out an
astrolabe to measure the height of the sun while his razors
are getting ready, his dancing the dance of Zimri and
singing the song of Zamtout, his disappointing the young
man of an assignation, following him to the place of
rendezvous, and alarming the master of the house in his
anxiety for his safety, by which his unfortunate patron
loses his hand in the afi&ay: and this is felt as an
awkward accident. The danger which the same loquacious
person is afterwards in, of losing his head for want of
saying who he was, because he would not forfeit his
character of being "justly called the Silent," is a con-
summation of the jest, though, if it had really taken place,
it would have been carrying the joke too far. There are
a thousand instances of the same sort in the Thousand and
One Nights, which are an inexhaustible mine of comic,
humour and invention, and which, from the manners
of the East which they describe, carry the principle of
callous indifference in a jest as far as it can go. The
serious and marvellous stories in that work, which have
been so much admired and so greedily read, appear to me
monstrous and abortive fictions, like disjointed dreams,
dictated by a preternatural dread of arbitrary and despotic
power, as the comic and familiar stories are rendered pro-
portionably amusing and interesting from the same prin-
ciple operating in a different direction, and producing
endless uncertainty and vicissitude, and an heroic con-
tempt for the untoward accidents and petty vexations of

14 The English Comic Wriiers.

human life. It is the gaiety of despair, the mirtli and
laughter of a respite during pleasure from death. The
strongest instances of effectual and harrowing imagination
are in the story of Amine and her three sisters, whom she
led by her side as a leash of hoimds, and of the goul who
nibbled grains of rice for her dinner, and preyed on
hnman carcasses. In this condemnation of the serious
parts of the ' Arabian Nights,' I have nearly all the world,
and in particular the author of the ' Ancient Mariner,'
against me, who must be allowed to be a* judge of such
matters, and who said, with a subtlety of philosophical
oonjocture which he alone possesses, '' That if I did not like
them, it was because I did not dream." On the other
hand, I have Bishop Atterbury on my side, who, in a
letter to Pope, fairly confesses that " he could not read
them in his old age."

There is another source of comic humour which has
been but little touched on or attended to by the critics —
not the infliction of casual pain, but the pursuit of un-
certain pleasure and idle gallantry. Half the business
and gaiety of comedy turns upon this. Most of the
adventures, difSiculties, demurs, hair-breadtli 'scapes, dis-
guises, deceptions, blunders, disappointments, successes,
excuses, all the dexterous manoeuvres, artful inuendoes,
assignations, billets-doux, dovble entendreSy sly allusions,
and elegant flattery, have an eye to this — ^to the obtaining
of those " favours secret, sweet, and precious," in which
love and pleasure consist; and which when attained, and
the equivoque is at an end, the curtain drops, and the play
is over. All the attractions of a subject that can only be
glanced at indirectly, that is a sort of forbidden ground to
the imagination, except under severe restrictions, which
are constantly broken through ; all the resources it sup-
plies for intrigue and invention ; the bashfulness of the
clownish lover, his looks of alarm and petrified astonish-
ment ; the foppish affectation and easy confidence of the

WU and Emaowr. 15

happy man ; the dress, the airs, the languor, the scorn,
and indifference of the fine lady ; the bustle, pertness,
loquaciousness, and tricks of the chambermaid; the im-
pudence, lies, and roguery of the valet ; the match-making
and unmaking; the wisdom of the wise; the sayings of
the witty, the folly of the fool ; " the soldier's, scholar's,
courtier's eye, tongue, sword, the glass of fSeishion and the
mould of form," have all a yiew to this. It is the closet
in 'Blue-Beard.' It is the life and soul of Wycherley,
Congreve, Yanbrugh, and Farquhar's plays. It is the
salt of comedy, without which it would be worthless and
insipid. It makes Homer decent, and Millamant divine.
It is the jest between Tattle and Miss Frue. It is the
bait with which Olivia, in the ' Plain Dealer,' plays with
honest Manly. It lurks at the bottom of the catechism
which Archer teaches Cherry, and which she learns by
heart. It gives the finishing grace to Mrs. Amlet's con-
fession — ** Though I'm old, I'm chaste." Valentine and
his Angelica would be nothing without it ; Miss Peggy
would not be worth a gallant; and Slender's ''sweet
^ Anne Page " would be no more ! " The age of comedy
would be gone, and the glory of our playhouses extin-
guished for ever." Our old comedies would be invaluable,
were it only for this, that they keep alive this sentiment,
which still survives in all its fluttering grace and breath*
less pi^ipitations on the stage.

Hlmiou^/^ the describing the ludicrous as it is in itself;
wit isHihe exposing it, by comparing or contrasting it with
something else. Humour is, as it were, the growth of
nature and accident ; wit is the product of art and fancy.
Humour, as it is shown in books, is an imitation of the
natural or acquired absurdities of mankind, or of the ludi- \
crous in accident, situation, and character : wit is the \
illustrating and heightening the sense of that absurdity by \
some sudden and imexpected likeness or opposition of one |
thiiig to another, which sets off the quality we laugh at or

'A

16 The English Comic Writers,

despise in a still more contemptible or striking point of
view. Wit, as distinguished from poetry, is the imagi-
nation or fancy inverted, and so applied to given objects,
as to make the little look less, the mean more light and
worthless ; or to divert onr admiration or wean our affec-
tions from that which is lofty and impressive, instead of
producing a more intense admiration and exalted passion,
as poetry does. Wit may sometimes, indeed, be shown in
compliments as well as satire ; as in the common epi-
gram —

'^ Accept a miracle, instead of wit :
See two dull lines with Stanhope's pencil writ.**

But then the mode of paying it is playful and ironical,
and contradicts itself in the very act of making its own
performance an humble foil to another's. Wit hovers
round the borders of the light and trifling, whether in
matters of pleasure or pain ; for as soon as it describes
the serious seriously, it ceases to be wit, and passes into a
different form. Wit is, in fact, the eloquence of indiffer-
ence, or an ingenious and stnJong exposition of those
evanescent and glancing impressions of objects which
a£fect us more from surprise or contrast to the train of our
ordinary and literal preconceptions, than from anything
in the objects themselves exciting our necessary sympathy
or lasting hatred. The favourite employment of wit is to
add littleness to littleness, and heap contempt on insigni-
ficance by all the arts of petty and incessant warfare ; or
if it ever affects to aggrandise, and use the language of
hyperbole, it is only to betray into derision by a fatal
comparison, as in the mock-heroic; or if it treats of
serious passion, it must do it so as to lower the tone of
intense and high- wrought sentiment, by the introduction
of burlesque and familiar circumstances. To give an
instance or two. Butler, in his ' Hudibras,' compares the
change of night into day, to the change of colour in a
boiled lobster:

Uii W'd and Humour. 17

•* TJie (ran had long since, in the lap
Of Tlietis, taken out his nap ;
And, like a lobster boil'd, the mom
From black to red, began to turn :
When Hudibi-as, whom thoughts and aching
'Twixt sleeping kept all night, and waking,
Began to rub his drowsy eyes,
And from his couch prepared to rise,
Eesolving to dispatch the deed
He vow'd to do with trusty speed."

Compare this with the following stanzas in Spenser, treat-
ing of the same subject : —

" By this the Northern Waggoner had set
His seven-fold team behind the stedfast star,
That was in Ocean waves yet never wet,
But firm is fix'd and sendeth light from far
To all that in the wide deep wand'ring are :
And cheerful chanticleer with his note shrill.
Had warned once that Phoebus* fiery car
In haste was climbing up the eastern hill, .

Full envious that night so long his room did fill.

" At last the golden oriental gate
Of greatest heaven 'gan to open fair,
And Phoebus, fresh as bridegroom to his mate.
Came dancing forth, shaking his dewy hair.
And hurl'd his glist'ring beams through gloomy air :
Which when the wakeful elf perceiv'd, straightway
He started up and did himself prepare
In sun-bright arms and battailous array.
For with that pagan proud he combat will that day."

In this last passage, every image is brought forward that
can give effect to our natural impression of the beauty,
the splendour, and solemn grandeur of the rising sun ;
pleasure and power wait on every line and word ; whereas,
in the other, the only memorable thing is a grotesque and
ludicrous illustration of the alteration which takes place
from darkness to gorgeous light, and that brought from
the lowest instance, and with associations that can only
disturb and perplex the imagination in its conception of

18 The English Comic Writers.

the real object it describes. There cannot be a more
witty, and at the same time degrading comparison, than
that in the same author, of the Bear turning ronnd the
pole-star to a bear tied to a stake : —

" Bat now a sport more formidable
Had raked together village rabble ;
'Twaa an old way of recreating
Which learned butchers call bear-baitiiig,
A bold adventrous exercise
With ancient heroes in high prize,
For authors do affirm it came
From Isthmian or Nemaean game ;
. Others derive it from the Bear
That's fixed in northern hemisphere,
And round about hia pole does make
A circle like a bear at stake,
That at the chain's end wheels about
And overturns the rabble rout,"

I need not multiply examples of this sort. Wit or ludi-
crous invention produces its effect oftenest by comparison,
but not always. It frequently effects its purposes by
unexpected and subtle distinctions. For instance, in the
first kind, Mr. Sheridan's description of Mr. Addington's
administration as the fag end of Mr. Pitt's, who had
remained so long on the treasury bench that, like Nicias
in the fable, ^' he left the sitting part of the man behind
him," is as fine an example of metaphorical wit as any on
record. The same idea seems, however, to have been
included in the old well-known nickname of the Mump
Parliament. Almost as happy an instance of the other
kind of wit, which consists in sudden retorts, in turns
upon an idea, and diverting the train of your adversary's
argument abruptly and adroitly into another channel, may
be seen in the sarcastic reply of Person, who hearing some
one observe, that '* certain modem poets would be read
and admired when Homer and Virgil were forgotten,"
made answer — " And not till then I" Sir Eobert Walpole's
definition of the gratitude of place-expectants, '* That it is

>c^

On Wit and Hwmov/r. 19

a lively sense of fviure favours," is no doubt wit, but it
does not consist in the finding out any coincidence or like-
ness, but in suddenly transposing the order of time in the
common account of this feeling, so as to make the profes-
sions of those who pretend to it correspond more with
their practice. It is filling up a blank in the human
heart with a word that explains its hollowness at once.
Voltaire's saying, in answer to a stranger who was
observing how tall his trees grew — "That they had
nothing else to do " — was a quaint mixture of wit and
humour, making it out as if they really led a lazy, labo-
rious life ; but there was here neitiier allusion or metaphor.
Again, that master-stroke in Hudibras is sterling wit and
profound satire, where speaking of certain religious hypo-
crites he says, that they /

" Compound for sins they are inclin'd to,
By damning those they have no mind to ;"

but the wit Consists in the truth of the character, and in
the happy exposure of the ludicrous contradiction between
the pretext and the practice ; between their lenity towards
their own vices, and their severity to those of others.
The same principle of nice distinction must be allowed to
prevail in those lines of the same author, where he is pro-
fessing to expound the dreams of judicial astrology.

" There's but the twinkling of a star
Betwixt a man of peace and war; <

A thief and justice, fool and knave.
A huffing officer and a slave; '
A crafty lawyer and pickpocket,
A great philosopher and ahlockhead;
A formal preacher and a player,
A learn'd physician and man slayer,*'

The finest piece of wit I know of, is in the lines of Pope
on the Lord Mayor's show —

" Now night descending, the proud scene is o'er.
But lives in Settle's numbers one day more."

2

V

20 The English Comic Writers.

\

/^

This is certainly as mortifying an inversion of the idea
of poetical immortality as could be thought of; it fixes
the maaimum of littleness and insignificance : but it is not
^ by likeness to anything else that it does this, but by
^. IjimJly taking the lowest possible duration of ephemeral
y'^putation, marking it (as with a slider) on the scale of
' endless renown, and giving a rival credit for it as his
^ loftiest praise. In a word, the shrewd separation or dis-
entangling of ideas that seem the same, or where the
secret contradiction is not sufficiently suspected, and is of
a ludicrous and whimsical nature, is wit just as much as
the bringing together those that appear at first sight
totally different.' There is then no sufficient ground for
admitting Mr. Ik)cke's celebrated definition of wit, which
he makes to consist in the finding out striking and unex-
pected resemblances in things as so to make pleasant
pictures in the fancy, while judgment and reason, accord-
ing to him, lie the clean contrary way, in separating and
nicely distinguishing those wherein the smallest difference

is to be foimd.*

i

I ♦ His words are — " If in having onr ideas in the memory ready at

tband consists quickness of parts, in this of having them unconfused,
and being able nicely to distinguish one thing from another, whero
there is but the least difference, consists in a great measure the
exactness of judgment and clearness of reason, which is to be ob-
served in one man above another. And hence, perhaps, may be
given some reason of that common observation, that men who have
a great deal of wit and prompt memories, have not always the
clearest judgm^it or deepest reason. For wit lying mostly in the
j.^ assemblage of ideas, and putting them together with quickness and

^ ^ variety, wherein can be found any resemblance or congruity, there-

by to make up pleasant pictures and agreeable visions in the fancy ;
judgment, on the contrary, lies quite on the other side, in separating
carefullv one from another, ideas wherein can be found Uie least
difference, thereby to avoid being misled by similitude, and by
affinity to take one thing for another." (* Essay,' vol i. p. 143.)
This definition, such as it is, Mr. Locke took witiiout acknowledg-
ment from Hobbes, who says in his * Leviathan,' " This difference of
quickness is cauaed by the difference of men's passions that love

.'A

/

/,

\1

On WU and Humour.

21

I

/

>

On this definition Harris, the author of ^ Hermes,' has
very well observed that the demonstrat^ the equality of
the three angles of a right-angled tmngle to two right
ones, would, upon the principle here stated, be a piece of
wit instead of an act of the judgment or understanding,
and ' Euclid's Elements ' a collection of epigrams. On th«
contrary it has appeared, that the detection and exposure
of dijBference, particularly where this implies nice and
subtle observatipn, as in discriminating between pretence
and practice, between appearance and reality, is common
to wit and satire with judgment and reasoning, and
certainly the comparing and connecting our ideas together
is an essential part of reason and judgment, as well as of
wit and fancy. Mere wit, as opposed to reason or
argument, consists in striking out some casual and partial
coincidence which has nothing to do, or at least implies no
necessary connection with the nature of the things, whicb
are forced into a seeming analogy by a play upon words,
or some irrelevant conceit, as in puns, riddles, alliteration,
&c. The jest, in all such cases, lies in the sort of mock-
identity, or nominal resemblance, established by the inter-

\

and dislike some

men's thoughts run one way, some another, and are held to, and
observe differently the things that pass through their imagination.
And whereas in this succession of men's thoughts there is nothing
to observe in the things they think on, but either in what they be
like one another, or in what they be unlike, . . . those that observe
their similitudes, in case they be such as are but rarely ohserved by
others, are said to have a good wit, by which on this occasion is meant
a good fancy. But they that observe their differences and dissimili-
tudes, which is called distinguishing and discerning, and judging
between thing and thing, in case such discerning be not easy, are
said to have a good judgment ; and particularly in matter of con-
versation and business ; wherein times;, places, and persons are to be
discerned, this virtue is called discretion. The former, that is, fancy»
without the help of judgment, is not commmended for a virtue ; but
the latter, which is judgment or discretion, is commended for itself^'
without the help of fency." • Leviathan ' [En. 1651] p. 32.

J

V

\

>

\

\

v-r

<^

>^

\:

I

\

\

.,-v

V

22 . The Efifflish Comie Writers.

yention of the same words expressing di£Eerent ideas, and
countenancing as it were, bj a fatality of language, the
mischieyons insinuation which the person who has the wit
to take adyantage of it wishes to conyej. So when the
disafifected French wits applied to the new order of the
Fleur du lya the dcniibU entendre of ConvpcLgnons d^Ulysse, or
companions of Ulysses, meaning the animal into which
the fellow-trayellers of the hero of the * Odyssey ^ were
transformed, this was a shrewd and biting intimation of a
galling trath (if truth it were) by a fortuitous concourse
of letters of the alphabet, jumping in " a foregone con-
clusion,'' but there was no proof of the thing, unless it was
self-eyident. And, indeed, this may be considered as the
best defence of the contested maxim— That ridicule is the
test of truth ; yiz., that it does not contain or attempt a
formal proof of it, but owes its power of conyiction to the
bare suggestion of it, so that if the thing when once hinted
is not clear in itself, the satire fSsdls of its effect and falls
to the ground. The sarcasm here glanced at the character
of the new or old French noblesse may not be well
founded; but it is so like truth, and '' comes in such a
questionable shape," backed with the appearance of an
identical proposition, that it would require a long train of
facts and laboured arguments to do away the impression,
even if we were sure of the honesty and wisdom of the
person who undertook to refute it. A flippant jest is as
good a test of truth as a solid bribe ; and there are serious
sophistries,

*' Soul-killing lies, and truths that work small good/'

as well as idle pleasantries. Of this we may be sure, that
ridicule fastens on the yulnerable points of a cause, and
finds out the weak sides of an argument ; if those who
resort to it sometimes rely too much on its success, those
who are chiefly annoyed by it almost always are so with
reason, and cannot be too much on their guard against
deserving it. Before we can laugh at a thing, its absurdity^

On WU and Humour, 23

must at least be open and palpable to common appreben-
sion. Bidicnle is necessarily built on certain supposed
facts, wbetber true or false, and on tbeir inconsistency
witb certain acknowledged maxims, wbetber rigbt or
wrong. It is, tberefore, a fur test, if not of pbilosopbical
or abstract trutb, at least of wbat is trutb according to
public opinion and common sense ; for it can only expose
to instantaneous contempt tbat wbicb is condemned by
public opinion, and is bostile to tbe common sense of
mankind. Or to put it differently, it is tbe test of tbe
quantity of truth that there is in our favourite prejudices.
To sbow bow nearly allied wit is tbougbt to be to
trutb, it is not unusual to say of any person — " Sucb a one
is a man of sense, for tbougb be said notbing, be laugbed
in tbe rigbt place." Alliteration comes in bere under tbe
bead of a certain sort of verbal wit ; or, by pointing tbe
expression, sometimes points tbe sense. Mr. Grattan's wit
or eloquence (I don't know by wbat name to call it) would
be notbing witbout tbis accompaniment. Speaking of
some ministers wbom be did not like, be said, '' Tbeir only
means of government are tbe guinea and tbe gallows."
Tbere can scarcely, it must be confessed, be a more
effectual mode of political conversion tban one of tbese
applied to a man's friends, and tbe otber to bimself. Tbe
fine sarcasm of Junius on tbe effect of tbe supposed
ingratitude of tbe Duke of Grafton at court — ** Tbe
instance migbt be painful, but tbe principle would please "
>— notwitbstanding tbe profound insigbt into buman nature
it implies,- would bardly pass for wit witbout tbe allitera-
tion, as some poetry would bardly be acknowledged as
sucb witbout tbe rbyme to clencb it. A quotation or a
backneyed pbrase dextrously turned or wrested to anotber
purpose, bas often tbe effect of tbe liveliest wit. An idle
fellow wbo bad only fourpence left in tbe world, wbicb
bad been put by to pay for tbe baking some meat for bis
dinner, went and laid it out to buy a new string for a

L

24 The English Comio Writers,

guitar. An old acquaintance on hearing this story, re-
peated those lines out of the ' Allegro * —

" And ever against eating cares
Lap me in soft Lydian airs."

The reply of the author of the periodical paper called the
* World ' to a lady at church, who seeing him look thought-
ful, asked what he was thinking of — "The next World,"
— is a perversion of an established formula of language,
something of the same kind. Ehymes are sometimes a
species of wit, where there is an alternate combination and
resolution, or decomposition of the elements of sound,
contrary to our usual division and classification of them
in ordinary speech, not unlike the sudden separation and
reunion of the component parts of the machinery in a
pantomime. The author who excels infinitely the most in
this way is the writer of * Hudibras.' He also excels in the
invention of single words and names which have the effect
of wit by sounding big, and meaning nothing : — ^^ fall of
sound and fury, signifying nothing." But of the artifices
of this author's burlesque style I shall have occasion to
speak hereafter. It is not always easy to distinguish
between the wit of words and that of things ; " For thin
partitions do their bounds divide." Some of the late
Mr. Curran's hon mots or jeux d'esprit, might be said to
owe their birth to this sort of equivocal generation; or
were a happy mixture of verbal wit and a lively and
picturesque fancy, of legal acuteness in detecting the
variable applications of words, and of a mind apt at
perceiving the ludicrous in external objects. "Do you
see anything ridiculous in this wig?" said one of his
brother judges to him. " Nothing but the head," was the
answer. Now here instantaneous advantage was taken of
the slight technical ambiguity in the construction of
language, and the matter-of-fact is flung into the scale as
a thumping makeweight. After all, verbal and accidental
strokes of wit, though the most surprising and laughable,

On Wit and Humour. 25

are not the best and most lasting. That wit is the most
refined and effectual which is founded on the detection of
unexpected likeness or distinction in things, rather than
in words. It is more severe and galling — that is, it is
more unpardonable though less surprising, in proportion
as the thought suggested is more complete and satis-
factory from its being inherent in the nature of the things
themselves. Hceret lateri lethcdis arundo. Truth makes
the greatest libel ; and it is that which barbs the darts of
wit. The Duke of Buckingham's saying, " Laws are not,
like women, the worse for being old," is an instance of a
harmless truism and the utmost maUce of wit united. This
is, perhaps, what has been meant by the distinction between
true and false wit. Mr. Addison, indeed, goes so far as
to make it the exclusive test of true wit that it will bear
translation into another language — that is to say, that it
does not depend at all on the form of expression. But
this is by no means the case. Swift would hardly
have allowed of such a straitlaced theory to make havoc
with his darling conundrums, though there is no one
whose serious wit is more that of things, as opposed
to a mere play either of words or •'fancy. I ought, I
believe, to have noticed before, in speaking of the dif-
ference between wit and humour, that wit is often pre-
tended absurdity, where the person overacts or exaggerates
a certain part with a conscious design to expose it as if it
were another person, as when Mandrake in the * Twin
Eivals ' says, *' This glass is too big, carry it away, I'll
drink out of the bottle." On the contrary, when Sir
Hugh Evans says, very innocently, " 'Od's plessed will,
I will not be absence at the grace," though there is
here a great deal of humour, there is no wit. This kind
of wit of the humorist, where the person makes a butt of
himself, and exhibits his own absurdities or foibles pur-
posely in the most pointed and glaring lights, runs
through the whole of the character of Falstaff, and is, in

26 The EiiffUsh Comic Writers.

truth, the principle on which it is founded. It is an
irony directed against one's self. Wit is, in fact, a
voluntary act of the mind, or exercise of the invention,
showing the absurd and ludicrous consciously, whether in
ourselves or another. Cross-readings, where the blunders
are designed, are wit ; but if any one were to light upon
them through ignorance or accident, they would be
merely ludicrous.

It might be made an argument of the intrinsic su-
periority of poetry or imagination to wit, that the former
does not admit of mere verbal combinations. Whenever
they do occur, they are uniformly blemishes. It requires
something more solid and substantial to raise admiration
or passion. The general forms and aggregate masses of
our ideas must be brought more into play to give weight
and magnitude. Imagination .may be said to be the
finding out something similar in things generally alike, or
with like feelings attached to them ; while wit principally
aims at finding out something that seems the same, or
amounts to a momentary deception where you least ex-
pected it, namely, in things totally opposite. The reason
why more slight and partial, or merely accidental and
nominal resemblances serve the purposes of wit, and
indeed characterise its essence as a distinct operation and
faculty of the mind, is, that the object of ludicrous poetry
is naturally to let down and lessen ; and it is easier to let
down than to raise up; to weaken than to strengthen;
to disconnect our sympathy from passion and power,
than to attach and rivet its to any object of grandeur
or interest; to startle and shock our preconceptions
by incongruous and equivocal combinations, than to
confirm, enforce, and expand them by powerful and lasting
associations of ideas, or striking and true analogies. A
glight cause is sufficient to produce a slight effect To be
indifferent or sceptical, requires no effort; to be enthu-
siastic and in earnest, requires a strong impulse and

V ^

On WU and Sumour. 27

collective power. IWit and humotir (comparatively /
speaking, or taking the extremes to judge of the grada- I
tions by) appeal to our indolence, our vanity, our weak- I
ness, and insensibility; serious and impassioned poetry \
appeals to our strength, our magnanimity, our virtue, and \
humanity. J Anything is sufficient to heap contempt upon
an object; even the bare suggestion of a mischievous
allusion to what is improper dissolves the whole charm,
and puts an end to our admiration of the sublime or
beautiful. Beading the finest passage in Milton's ' Para-
dise Lost ' in a false tone, will make it seem insipid and
i^bsurd. The cavilling at, or invidiously pointing out,
a few slips of the pen, will embitter the pleasure, or alter
our opinion of a whole work, and make us throw it down
in disgust. The critics are aware of this vice and in-
firmity in our nature, and play upon it with periodical
success. The meanest weapons are strong enough for
this kind of warfare, and the meanest hands can wield
them. Spleen can subsist on any kind of food. The
shadow of a doubt, the hint of an inconsistency, a word, a
look, a syllable, will destroy our best-formed convictions.
What puts this argument in as striking a point of view as
anything, is the nature of parody or burlesque, the secret
of which lies merely in transposing or applying at a
venture to anything, or to the lowest objects, that which
is applicable only to certain given things, or to the
highest matters. ''From the sublime to the ridiculous \
there is but one step." The slightest want of unity of
impression destroys the sublime ; the detection of the /
smallest incongruity is an infallible groimd to rest the |
ludicrous upon. But in serious poetry, which aims at
riveting our affections, every blow must tell home. The
missing ^ single time is fatal, and imdoes the spell. We
see how difficult it is to sustain a continued flight of
impressive sentiment : how easy it must be then to
travestie or burlesque it, to flounder into nonsense, and be

28 The English Comic Writers.

witty by playing the fool. It is a common mistake,
however, to suppose that parodies degrade, or imply a
stigma on the subject ; on the contrary, they in general
imply something serious or sacred in the originals.
Without this, they would be good for nothing, for the
immediate contrast would be wanting, and with this they
are sure to tell. The best parodies are, accordingly, the
best and most striking things reversed. Witness the
common travesties of Homer and Virgil. Mr. Canning's
court parodies on Mr. Southey's popular odes, are also an
instance in point (I do not know which were the cleverest) ;
and the best of the' ' Eejected Addresses ' is the parody on
Crabbe, though I do not certainly think that Crabbe is
the most ridiculous poet now living.*

Lear and the Fool are the sublimest instance I know of
passion and wit united, or of imagination unfolding the
most tremendous sufferings, and of burlesque on passion
playing with it, aiding and relieving its intensity by the
most pointed, but familiar and indifferent illustrations of
the same thing in different objects, and on a meaner scale.
The Fool's reproaching Lear with " making his daughters
his mothers," his snatches of proverbs and old ballads,
" The hedge-sparrow fed the cuckoo so long, that it had
its head bit off by its young," and " Whoop jug, I know
when the horse follows the cart," are a running commen-
tary of trite truisms, pointing out the extreme folly of the
infatuated old monarch, and in a manner reconciling us
to its inevitable consequences.

Lastly, there is a wit of sense and observation, which
consists in the acute illustration of good sense and prac-
tical wisdom, by means of some far-fetched conceit or quaint
imagery. The matter is sense, but the form is wit. Thus
the lines in Pope —

*• 'Tis with our judgments as our watches, noue
Go just alike; yet each believes his own — "

* This was written in 1818. — Ed.

On Wit and Humour, 29

are witty, rather than poetical; because the truth they
convey is a mere dry observation on human life, without
elevation or enthusiasm, and the illustration of it is of
that quaint and familiar kind that is merely curious and
fanciful. Cowley is an instance of the same kind in
almost all his writings. Many of the jests and witticisms
in the best comedies are moral aphorisms and rules for
the conduct of life, sparkling with wit and fancy in the
mode of expression. The ancient philosophers also
abounded in the same kind of wit, in telling home truths-
in the most unexpected manner. In this sense iBsop was
the greatest wit and moralist that ever lived. Ape and
slave, he looked askance at human nature, and beheld its
weaknesses and errors transferred to another spccies.^
Vice and virtue were to him as plain as any objects of
sense. He saw in man a talking, absurd, obstinate, proud,
angry animal ; and clothed these abstractions with wings,
or a beak, or tail, or claws, or long ears, as they appeared
embodied in these hieroglyphics in the brute creation.
His moral philosophy is natural history. He makes an'
ass bray wisdom, and a frog croak humanity. The store
of moral truth, and the fund of invention in exhibiting it
in eternal forms, palpable and intelligible, and delightful
to children and grown persons, and to all ages and nations,
are almost miraculous. The invention of a fable is to me
the most enviable exertion of human genius: it is the
discovering a truth to which there is no clue, and which,
when once found out, can never be forgotten. I would rather
have been the author of * -ZEsop's Fables,' than of * Euclid's
Elements !' That popular entertainment, Punch and the
Puppet-show, owes part of its irresistible and universal
attraction to nearly the same principle of inspiring
inanimate and mechanical agents with sense and con-
sciousness. The drollery and wit of a piece of wood is
doubly droll and farcical. Punch is not merry in himself,
but " he is the cause of heartfelt mirth in other men."

30 The English Gomio Writers.

The wires and pulleys that govern his motions are eon-
cLnctors to carry off the spleen, and all '' that perilous stuff
that weighs upon the heart." If we see a number of
people turning the comer of a street, ready to burst with
secret satisfaction, and with their faces bathed in laughter,
we know what is the matter — that they are just come from
a puppet-show. Who can see three little painted, patched-
up figares, no bigger than one's thumb, strut, squeak and
gibber, sing, dance, chatter, scold, knock one another
about the head, give themselves airs of importance, and
^< imitate humanity most abominably," without laughing
immoderately ? We overlook the farce and mummery of
human life in little, and for nothing ; and what is still
better, it costs them who have to play in it nothing. We
place the mirth, and glee, and triumph, to our own
account ; and we know that the bangs and blows they have
received go for nothing, as soon as the showman puts
them up in his box and marches off quietly with them, as
jugglers of a less amusing description sometimes march off
with the wrongs and rights of mankind in their pockets !
— ^I have heard no bad judge of such matters say, that
*^ he liked a comedy better than a tragedy, a farce better
than a comedy, a pantomime better than a farce, but a
puppet-show best of all." I look upon it, that he who
invented puppetnshows was a greater benefactor to his
species than he who invented operas !

I shall conclude this imperfect and desultory sketch of
wit and humour with Barrow's celebrated description of
the same subject He says, — ** But first it may be
demanded, what the thing we speak of is, or what this
facetiousness doth import; to which question I might
reply, as Democritus did to him that asked the definition
of a man — ^tis that which we aU see and know ; and one
better apprehends what it is by acquaintance, than I can
inform him by description. It is, indeed, a thing so
versatile and multiform, appearing in so many shapes, so

On Wit and Humour. 31

many postures, so many garbs, so variously appreliended
by several eyes and judgments, that it seemeth no less
hard to settle a clear and certain notice thereof, than to
make a portrait of Proteus, or to define the figure of
fleeting air. Sometimes it lieth in pat allusion to a known
story, or in seasonable application of a trivial saying, or
in forging an apposite tale : sometimes it playeth in words
and phrases, taking advantage from the ambiguity of their
sense, or the afi&nity of their sound: sometimes it is
wrapped in a dress of luminous expression ; sometimes it
lurketh under an odd similitude. Sometimes it is lodged
in a sly question, in a smart answer ; in a quirkish
reason ; in a shrewd intimation ; in cunningly diverting
or cleverly restoring an objection : sometimes it is couched
in a bold scheme of speech ; in a tart irony ; in a lusty
hyperbole; in a startling metaphor; in a plausible
reconciling of contradictions, or in acute nonsense : some-
times a scenical representation of persons or things, a
counterfeit speech, a mimical look or gesture passeth for
it; sometimes an afiEected simplicity, sometimes a pre-
sumptuous bluntness giveth it being ; sometimes it riseth
only from a lucky hitting upon what is strange : sometimes
from a crafty wresting obvious matter to the purpose:
often it consisteth in one knows not what, and springeth
up one can hardly tell how. Its ways are unaccountable
and inexplicable, being answerable to the numberless
rovings of fancy and windings of language. It is, in short,
a manner of speaking out of the simple and plain way
(such as reason teacheth and knoweth things by), which
by a pretty surprising uncouthness in conceit or expression
doth affect and amuse the fancy, showing in it some
wonder, and breathing some delight thereto. It raiseth
admiration, as signifying a nimble sagacity of appre-
hension, a special felicity of invention, a vivacity of
spirit, and reach of wit more than vulgar : it seeming to
■argue a rare quickness of parts, that one can fetch in

32 Tlie English Comic Writers,

remote conceits applicable ; a notable skill that lie can
dextrously accommodate them to a purpose before him,
together with a lively briskness of humour, not apt to
damp those sportful flashes of imagination. (Whence in
Aristotle such persons are termed cttiSc^ioi, dextrous men
and cvrpoTToi, men of facile or versatile manners, who can
easily turn themselves to all things, or turn all things to
themselves.) It also procureth delight by gratifying
curiosity with its rareness or semblance of difficulty (as
monsters, not for their beauty but their rarity ; as juggling
tricks, not for their use but their abstruseness, are beheld
with pleasure) ; by diverting the mind from its road of
serious thoughts; by instilling gaiety and airiness of
spirit ; by provoking to such dispositions of spirit, in way
of emulation or complaisance, and by seasoning matter,
otherwise distasteful or insipid, with an unusual and
thence grateful tang."*

I will only add by way of general caution, that there
is nothing more ridiculous than laughter without a cause,
nor anything more troublesome than what are called
laughing people. A professed laugher is as contemptible
and tiresome a character as a professed wit : the one is
always contriving something to laugh at, the other is
always laughing at nothing. An excess of levity is as
impertinent as an excess of gravity. A character of this
sort is well personified by Spenser, in the * Damsel of the
Idle Lake ' —

u

-Who did assay

To laugh at shaking of the leaves light/'

Any one must be mainly ignorant or thoughtless, who
is surprised at everything he sees ; or wonderfully con-
ceited, who expects everything to conform to his standard
of propriety. Clowns and idiots laugh on all occasions ;
and the common failing of wishing to be thought satirical
often runs through whole families in coimtry places, to

♦ * Barrow's Works/ Serin. 14.

Wit and Humour. 33

the great annoyance of their neighbours. To be struck
with incongruity in whatever comes before us, does not
argue great comprehension or refinement of perception,
but rather a looseness and flippancy of mind and temper,
which prevents the individual from connecting any two
ideas steadily or consistently together. It is owing to a
natural crudity and precipitateness of the imagination,
which assimilates nothing properly to itself. People who
are always laughing, at length laugh on the wrong side of
their faces, for they cannot get others to laugh with them.
In like manner, an affectation of wit by degrees hardens
the heart, and spoils good company and good manners.
A perpetual succession of good tlungs puts an end to
common conversation. There is no answer to a jest, but
another ; and even where the ball can be kept up in this
way without ceasing, it tires the patience of the by-
standers, and runs the Speakers out of breath. Wit is the ]
salt of conversation, not the food. '

The four chief names for comic humour out of our own
language are Aristophanes and Lucian among the ancients,
Moliere and Babelais among the modems. Of the two
first I shall say, for I know, but little. I should have
liked Aristophanes better, if he had treated Socrates less
scurvily, for he has treated him most scurvily both as to
wit and argument. His Plutus and his Birds are striking
instances, the one of dry humour, the other of airy fancy.
Lucian is a writer who appears to deserve his full fame :
he has the licentious and extravagant wit of Babelais, but
directed more uniformly to a purpose ; and his comic
jproductions are interspersed with beautiful and eloquent
descriptions, full of sentiment, such as the exquisite
.account of the fable of the halcyon put into the mouth of
Socrates, and the heroic eulogy on Bacchus, which is con-
ceived in the highest strain of glowing panegyric.

The two other authors I proposed to mention are
modem, and French. Molidre, however in the spirit

D

34 The JEnglish Comic Writers.

of bis writings, is almost as much an English as a French
author — quite a harhare in all in which he really excelled.
He was unquestionably one of the greatest comic geniuses
that ever lived ; a man of infinite wit, gaiety, and inven-
tion — ^fnU of life, laughter, and whim. But it cannot be
denied, that his plays are in general mere fJEffces, without
scrupulous adherence to nature, refinement of character, or
common probability. The plots of several of them could
not be carried on for a moment without a perfect collusion
between the parties to wink at contradictions, and act in
defiance of the evidence of their senses. For instance,
take the Medecin malgre lui (the ' Mock Doctor '), in which
a common wood-cutter takes upon himself, and is made
successfully to support through a whole play, the character
of a learned physician, without exciting the least sus-
picion; and yet, notwithstanding the absurdity of the
plot, it is one of the most laughable and truly comic pro-
ductions that can well be imagined. The rest of his
lighter pieces, the Bourgeois Gentilhomme, Monsieur
Pourceatignac^ George Dandin (or * Bamaby Brittle ')j &c.,
are of the same description — gratuitous assumptions of.
character, and fanciful and outrageous caricatures of
nature. He indulges at his peril in the utmost license of
burlesque exaggeration, and gives a loose to the intoxi-
cation of his animal spirits. With respect to his two
mos); laboured comedies, the 'Tartuffe' and * Misanthrope,' I
confess that I find them rather hard to get through : they
have much of the improbability and extravagance of the
others, united with the endless common-place prosing of
French declamation. What can exceed, for example, the
absurdity of the Misanthrope, who leaves his mistress,
after every proof of her attachment and constancy, for no
other reason than that she will not submit to the techniccd
formality of going to live with him in a wilderness ? The
characters, again, which Celimene gives of her female
friends, near the opening of the play, are admirable satires,

Wit and Humour. 35

(as good as Pope's characters of women), but not exactly
in the spirit of comic dialogue. The strictures of Bousseau
on this play, in his Letter to D'Alembert, are a fine speci-
men of the best philosophical criticism. The same
remarks apply in a greater degree to the ' Tartuffe.' The
long speeches and reasonings in this play tire one almost
to death : they may be very good logic, or rhetoric, or
philosophy, or anything but comedy. If each of the
parties had retained a special pleader to speak his
sentiments, they could not have appeared more verbose
or intricate. The improbability of the character of Orgon
is wonderful. This play is in one point of view invaluable,
as a lasting monument of the credulity of the French to
all verbal professions of wisdom or virtue ; and its exist-
ence can only be accounted for from that astonishing and
tyrannical predominance which words exercise over things
in the mind of every Frenchman. The Ecole des Femmes^
from which Wycherley has borrowed his ' Country Wife,'
with the true spirit of original genius,* is, in my judgment,
the masterpiece of Moli^re. The set speeches in the
original play, it is true, would not be borne on the English
stage, nor indeed on the French, but that they are carried
off by the verse. The Critique de VEexile des Femmes, the
dialogue of which is prose, is written in a very different
style. Among other things, this little piece contains an
exquisite, and almost unanswerable defence of the supe-
riority of comedy over tragedy. Moliere was to be
excused for taking this side of the question.

A writer of some pretensions among ourselves has
reproached the French with " an equal want of books and
men." There is a common French print, in which Moliere
is represented reading one of his plays in the presence of
the celebrated Ninon de TEnclos, to a circle of the wits
and first men of his own time. Among these are the

* Truly: for the drama has been Baid to be the best picture
extant of the dissolute manners of the court of Charles II. — En.

D 2

36 The English Comic Writers,

great Comeille ; the tender, faultless Bacine ; Foiitaine,
the artless old man, unconscious of immortality; the
accomplished St. Evremond ; the Duke de la Eochefocault,
the severe anatomiser of the human breast ; Boileau, the
flatterer of courts and judge of men I Were these men
nothing? They have passed for men (and great ones)
hitherto, and though the prejudice is an old one, I should
hope it may still last our time.

Eabelais is another name that might have saved this
unjust censure. The wise sayings and heroic deeds of Grar-
gantua and Fantagruel ought not to be set down as nothing.
I have already spoken my mind at large of this author ;
but I cannot help thinking of him here, sitting in his easy
chair, with an eye languid with excess of mirth, his lip
quivering with a new-bom conceit, and wiping his beard
after a well-seasoned jest, with his pen held carelessly
in his hand, his wine-flagons, and his books of law, of
school divinity, and physic, before him, which were his
jest-books, whence he drew endless stores of absurdity;
laughing at the world and enjoying it by turns, and
making the world laugh with him again, for the last three
hundred years, at his teeming wit and its own proliflc
follies. Even to those who have never read his works,
the name of Babelais is a cordial to the spirits, and the
mention of it cannot consist with gravity or spleen I

i

( 37 )

LECTUKE II.

ON SHAESPEABE AND BEN JONSON.

Db. Johnson thought Shakspeare's comedies better than
his tragedies, and gives as a reason, that he was more at
home in the one than in the other. That comedies should
be written in a more easy and careless vein than tragedies
is bnt natural. This is only saying that a comedy is not
BO serious a thing as a tragedy. But that he showed a
greater mastery in the one than the other, I cannot allow,
nor is it generally felt. The labour which the Doctor
thought it cost Shakspeare to write his tragedies, only
showed the labour which it cost the critic in reading
them, that is, his general indisposition to sympathise
heartily and spontaneously with works of high-wrought
passion or imagination. There is not in any part of this
author's writings the slightest trace of his haying ever
been *^ smit with the love of sacred song," except some
passages in Pope. His habitually morbid temperament '
and saturnine turn of thought required that the string .
should rather be relaxed than tightened, that the weight
upon the mind should rather be taken off than have any* :
thing added to it. There was a sluggish morosenes£r\
about his moral constitution that refused to be roused to \
any keen agony of thought, and that was not very safely I
to be trifled with in lighter matters, though this last was J
allowed to pass off as the most pardonable offence against
the gravity of his pretensions. It is in fact the established
rule at present, in these cases, to speak highly of the
Doctor's authority, and to dissent from almost every one

38 The English Comie Writers.

of his critical decisions. For my own part I so far con-
sider this preference given to the comic genius of the
poet as erroneous and unfounded, that I should say that
. he is the only tragic poet in the world in the highest
/ sense, as being on a par with, a nd the same as ^ Nature i n
^•»^er greatest heights and depths of action and suifering.
There is but one who durst walk within that mighty
circle, treading the utmost bound of nature and passion,
showing us the dread abyss of woe in all its ghastly
shapes and colours, and laying open all the faculties of
the human soul to act, to think, and suffer, in direst ex-
tremities ; whereas I think, on the other hand, that in
comedy, though his talents there too were as wonderful
as they were delightful, yet that there were some before
him, others on a level with him, and many close behind
him. I cannot help thinking, for instance, that Moliere
was as great or a greater comic genius than Shakspeare,
though assuredly I do not think that Bacine was as great
or a greater tragic genius. I think that both Eabelais
and Cervantes, the one in the power of ludicrous de-
scription, the other in the invention and perfect keeping
of comic character, excelled Shakspeare; that is, they
would have been greater men, if they had had equal
power with him over the stronger passions. For my own
reading, I like Vanbrugh's ' City Wives' Confederacy ' as
well, or (" not to speak it profanely ") better than the
'Merry Wives of Windsor,' and Congreve's 'Way of the
World ' as well as the ' Comedy of Errors ' or ' Love's Labour
Lost.' But I cannot say that I know of any tragedies in
the world that make even a tolerable approach to ' Hamlet,'
or * Lear,' or * Othello,' or some others, either in the sum
total of their effect, or in their complete distinctness
from everything else, by which they take not only un-
questioned, but undivided possession of the mind, and
form a class, a world by themselves, mingling with all
our thoughts like a second being. Other tragedies tell

^

Shahspeare and Ben Jonson. 39

for more or less, are good, bad, or indifferent, as they
have more or less excellence of a kind common to them
with others ; but these stand alone by themselves ; they
have nothing common-place in them; they are a new
power in the imagination, they tell for their whole amount,
they measure from the ground. There is not only no-
thing so good (in my judgment) as ' Hamlet,' or 'Lear,' or
* Othello,' or * Macbeth,' but there is nothing like ' Hamlet,'
or * Lear,' or ' Othello,' or * Macbeth.' There is nothing, I
believe, in the majestic Comeille, equal to the stem pride of
' Coriolanus,' or which gives such an idea of the crumbling
in pieces of the Eoman grandeur, ^ like an unsubstantial
pageant faded," as the ' Antony and Cleopatra.' But to
match the best serious comedies, such as Moli^re's ' Mis-
anthrope ' and his ' Tartuffe,' we must go to Shakspeare's
tragic characters, the ' Timon of Athens ' or honest lago,
when we shall more than succeed. He put his strength
into his tragedies, and played with comedy. He was
greatest in what was greatest ; and his forte was not
trifling, according to the opinion here combated, even
though he might do that as well as any one else, unless
he could do it better than anybody else. I would not be
understood to say that there are not scenes or whole
characters in Shakspeare equal in. wit and drollery to
anything upon record. Falstaff alone is an instance
which, if I would, I could not get over. " He is the
leviathan of all the creatures of the author's comic genius,
and tumbles about his unwieldy bulk in an ocean of wit
and humour." But in general it will be found (if I am ;
not mistaken) that even in the very best of these, the \
spirit of humanity and the fancy of the poet greatly |
prevail over the mere wit and satire, and that we sym- {
pathise with his characters oftener than we laugh at them, i
His ridicule wants the sting of ill-nature. He had hardly
£uch a thing as spleen in his composition. Falstaff him-
self is so great a joke, rather from his being so huge a

40 The English Comic Writers.

mass of enjoyment than of absurdity. His reappearance*
in the * Merry Wives of Windsor ' is not " a consmnma-
tion devoutly to be wished," for we do not take pleasure
in the repeated triumphs over him. Mercutio's quips
and banter upon his friends show amazing gaiety, frank-

! ness, and volubility of tongue, but we think no more of
them when the poet takes the words out of his mouth,

\ and gives the description of Queen Mab. Touchstone,
again, is a shrewd, biting fellow, a lively mischievous
wag ; but still what are his gibing sentences and chopped
logic to the fine moralizing vein of the fantastical
Jacques, stretched beneath *'the shade of melancholy
boughs ?" Nothing. That is, Shakspeare was a greater

V poet than wit; his imagination was the leading and

\ master-quality of his mind, which was always ready to
soar into its native element : the ludicrous was only
secondary and subordinate. In the comedies of gallantry
and intrigue, with what freshness and delight we come to
the serious and romantic parts ! What a relief they are
to the mind, after those of mere ribaldry or mirth I Those
in ' Twelfth Night,' for instance, and ' Much Ado about
Nothing,' where Olivia and Hero are concerned, throw
even Malvolio and Sir Toby, and Benedick and Beatrice,
into the shade. They " give a very echo to the seat where
love is throned." What he has said of music might be
said of his own poetry —

" Oh I it came o'er the ear like the sweet south
Breathing upon a bank of violets,
Stealing and giving odour."

How poor, in general, what a falling-o£^ these parts seem
in mere comic authors ; how ashamed we are of them ;
and how fast we hurry the blank verse over, that we may
get upon safe ground again, and recover our good opinion

♦ i.e. After having figured in four of the historical play^
♦Henry IV./ Parts I. and H., * Henry V.,* and First Part of
* Henry VL'—Ed.

ShaJcspeare and Bm Jofnmfh. 41

of the author I A striking and lamentable instance of this
may be found (by any one who chooses) in the high-flown
speeches in Sir Eichard Steele's ' Conscious Lovers/ As
good an example as any of this informing and redeeming
power in our author's genius might be taken from the
comic scenes in both parts of ' Henry IV.' Nothing can
go much lower in intellect Or morals than many of the
characters. Here are knaves and fools in abundance, of
the meanest order, and stripped stark-naked. But genius,
Uke charity, ^ covers a multitude of sins ;" we pity as
much as we despise them ; in spite of our disgust we like
them, because they like themselves, and because we are
made to sympathise with them ; and the ligament, fine as
it is, which links them to humanity, is never broken.
Who would quarrel with Wart or Feeble, or Mouldy or
BuU-calf ,* or even with Pistol, Nym, or Bardolph ? None
but a hypocrite. The severe censurers of the morals of
imaginary characters can generally find a hole for their
own vices to creep out at ; and yet do not perceive how
it is that the imperfect and even deformed characters in
Shakspeare's plays, as done to the life, by forming a part
of our personal consciousness, claim our personal forgive-
ness, and suspend or evade our moral judgment, by bribing
our self-love to side with them. Not to do so, is not
morality, but affectation, stupidity, or ill-nature. I have
more sympathy with one of Shakspeare's pick-purses,
Gadshill or Petb, than I can possibly have with any
member of the Society for the Suppression of Vice, and
would by no means assist to deliver the one into the
hands of the other. Those who cannot be persuaded to
draw a veil over the foibles of ideal characters, may be
suspected of wearing a mask over their own I Again, in
point of understanding and attainments, Shallow sinks
low enough ; and yet his cousin Silence is a foil to him ;
he is the shadow of a shade, glimmers on the very verge
* Characters in the Second Part of • Henry IV.'— Ed.

\

I

42 The English Comic Writers.

of downright imbecility, and totters on the brink of no-
thing. " He has been merry twice or once ere now," and
is hardly persuaded to break his silence in a song. Shallow
has '' heard the chimes at midnight," and roared out glees
and catches at taverns and inns of court, when he was
young. So, at least, he tells his cousin Silence, and Falstaff
encourages the loftiness of his pretensions. Shallow would be
thought a great man among his dependants and followers ;
Silence is nobody — not even in his own opinion : yet he
sits in the orchard, and eats his caraways and pippins
among the rest. Shakspeare takes up the meanest subjects
with the same tenderness that we do an insect's wing, and
would not kill a fly. To give a more particular instance
of what I mean, I will take the inimitable and afiEecting,
though most absurd and ludicrous d^logue, between
Shallow and Silence, on the death of old Double.*

**S1iaMow, Come on, come on, come on. Sir; give me your hand.
Sir ; give me your hand, Sir ; an early stirrer, by the rood. And
how doth my good cousin Silence ?

Silence. Good morrow, good cousin Shallow.

Shallow. And how doth my cousin, your bedfellow? and your
fairest daughter, and mine, my god-daughter Ellen ?

SUence. Alas ! a black ousel, cousin Shallow.

ShaUow. By yea and nay. Sir, I dare say my cousin William is
become a good scholar : he is at Oxford still, is he not ?

Silence. Indeed, Sir, to my cost.

Shallow. 'A must then to the Inns of Court shortly. I was once
of Clement's-Inn ; where, I think, they will talk of mad Shallow yet.

Silence. You were called lusty Shallow then, cousin.

ShaUow. I was called any thing, and I would have done any thing
indeed, too, and roundly too. There was I, and little John Doit of
Staffordshire, and black George Bare, and Francis Pickbone, and
Will Squele, a Cots'ol' man, you had not four such swinge-bucklers
in all the Inns o' Court again ; and I may say to you, we knew
where the bona-robas were, and had the best of them all at com-
mandment. Then was Jack Falstaff (now Sir John) a boy, and page
to Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk.t

* Second Part of * Henry IV.,' iii. 2 (Dyce's 2nd edit, iv. 355).— Ed.
t See Dyce's * Shakspeare,' 2nd edit., iv. 204.— Ed.

Shakspeare and Ben Jondon. 43

Silence. This Sir John, oonsiii, that comes hither anon about
soldiers ?

Shallow. The same Sir John, the very same. I saw hini break
Skogan's head at the court-gate, when he was a crack not thns high ;
and the very same day did I fight with one Sampson Stockfish, a
fruiterer, behind Gray's-Inn. Jesu, Jesu ! the mad days that I have
spent I and to see how many of mine old acquaintance are dead !

Silence. We shall all follow, cousin.

Shallow. Certain, 'tis certain, very silre, very sure : death (as the
Psalmist saith) is certain to all, all shall die. — ^How a good yoke of
bullocks at Stamford fair?

Silence. Truly, cousin, I was not there.

Shallow. Death is certain. Is old Double of your town living
yet?

Silence. Dead, Sir.

Shallow. Jesu, Jesu, dead ! 'a drew a good bow : and dead ? 'a
shot a fine shoot. John o' Gaunt loved him well, and betted much
money on his head. Dead ! 'a would have clapped i'th' clout at
twelve score; and carried you a fore-hand shaft a fourteen and
a fourteen and a half, that it would have done a man's heart good
to see. — How a score of ewes now ?

Silence. Thereafter as they be : a score of good ewes may be worth
ten poimds.

Shallow. And is old Double dead T*

There is not anything more characteristic than this in all
Shakspearo, A finer sermon on mortality was neyer
preached. We see the frail condition of human life, and
the weakness of the hnman nnderstanding in Shallow's
reflections on it; who, while the past is sliding from
beneath his feet, still clings to the present. The meanest
circumstances are shown through an atmosphere of ab-
straction that dignifies them : their very insignificance
makes them more affecting, for they instantly put a check
on our aspiring thoughts, and remind us that, seen through
that dim perspective, the difference between the great and
little, the wise and foolish, is not much. " One touch of
nature makes the whole world kin:", and old Double,
though his exploits had been greater, could but have had
his day. There is a pathetic naivete mixed up with
Shallow's common-place reflections and impertinent digres-

44 The English Comic Writers.

flions. The reader langlis (as well lie may) in reading

\ the passage, hut he lays down the hook to think. The wit,

- however diverting, is social and humane. But this is not

the distinguishing characteristic of wit, which is generally

I provoked by folly, and spends its venom upon vice.

The fault, then, of Shakspeare's comic Muse is, in my
opinion, that it is too good-natured and magnanimous.
It mounts above its quarry. It is '' apprehensive, quick^
forgetive, full of nimble, fiery, and delectable shapes;"
but it does not take the highest pleasure in making human
nature look as mean, as ridiculous, and contemptible as
possible. It is in this re[^)ect chiefly that it differs
from the comedy of a later, and (what is called) a more
refined period. Genteel comedy is the comedy of fashion-*
able life, and of artificial character and manners. The
most pungent ridicule is that which is directed to mortify
vanity and to expose affectation; but vanity and affecta-
tion, in their most exorbitant and studied exces^s, are
/ the ruling principles of society only in a highly advanced
'' state of civilization and manners. Man can hardly be
/ said to be a truly contemptible animal, till, from the
' - facilities of general intercourse and the progress of
example and opinion, he becomes the ape of the extrava-
gances of other men. The keenest edge of satire is
required to distinguish between the true and false pre-
tensions to taste and elegance ; its lash is laid on with
the utmost severity, to drive before it the common herd
of knaves and fools, not to lacerate and terrify the single
stragglers. In a word, it is when folly is epidemic, and
vice worn as a mark of distinction, that all the malice of
wit and humour is called out and justified to detect the
imposture, and prevent the contagion from spreading.
The fools in Wycherley and Congreve are of their own,
or one another's making, and deserve to be well scourged
into common sense and decency : the fools in Shakspeara
are of his own or nature's making ; and it would be unfair

/

ShaJcspeare and Ben Jonson. 45

to probe to the quick, or hold up to unqualified derision,
the faults which are involuntary and incorrigible, or
those which you yourself encourage and exaggerate from
the pleasure you take in witnessing them. Our later
comic writers represent a state of manners, in which to
be a man of wit and pleasure about town was become the
fashion, and in which the swarms ef egregious pretenders
in both kinds openly kept one another in countenance,
and were become a public nuisance. Shakspeare, living
in a state of greater rudeness and simplicity, chiefly gave
certain characters which were a kind of grotesques, or
solitary excrescences growing up out of their native soil
without affectation, and which he undertook kindly to
pamper for the public entertainment. For instance. Sir
Andrew Aguecheek is evidently a creature of the poet's
own fancy. The author lends occasion to his absurdity
to show itself as much as he pleases, devises antics for
him which would not enter into his own head, makes
him '^ go to church in a galliard, and return home in a
coranto ;" adds fuel to his folly, or throws cold water on
his courage ; makes his puny extravagances venture out
or slink into comers without asking his leave ; encourages
them into indiscreet luxuriance, or checks them in the
bud, just as it suits him, for the jest's sake. The gratifl-
eation of the fancy, *' and furnishing matter for innocent
mirth," are, therefore, the chief object of this and other
characters like it, rather than reforming the moral sense,
or indulging our personal spleen. But Tattle and
Sparkish,* who are fops cast not in the mould of fancy,
but of faahion, who have a tribe of forerunners and fol-
lowers, who catch certain diseases of the mind on purpose
to communicate the infection, and are screened in their
preposterous eccentricities by their own conceit and by
the world's opinion, are entitled to no quarter, and receive
none. They think themselves objects of envy and admi-
♦ Chaiactera in Congreve's • Love for Love.' — Ed.

46 The Enfflish Comic Writers.

zatioii, and on that acconnt are donbly objects of our
contempt and ridicnie. We find that the scenes of
Shakspeare's comedies are mostly laid in the conntiy, or
are transferable there at pleasure. The genteel comedy
exists only in towns, and crowds of borrowed characters^
who copy others as the satirist copies them, and who are
only seen to be despised. *' All beyond Hyde Park is a
desert to it :" while there the pastoral and poetic comedy
begins to vegetate and flonrish, nnpmned, idle, and
fantastic. It is hard to '* lay waste a country gentleman ^
in a state of nature, whose hnmonrs may have run a
little wild or to seed, or to lay violent hands on a young
booby 'squire, whose absurdities have not yet arrived at
years of discretion : but my Lord Foppington,* who is
*^the prince of coxcombs," and ** proud of being at the
head of so prevailing a party," deserves his fate. I am
not for going so fiEur as to pronounce Shakspeare's " manners
damnable, because he had not seen the court;" but I
think that comedy does not find its richest harvest till
individual infirmities have passed into general manners,
and it is the example of courts chiefly, that stamps folly
with credit and currency, or glosses over vice with mere-
tricious lustre. I conceive, therefore, that the golden
period of our comedy was just after the age of Charles U.,
when the town first became tainted with the affectation
of the manners and conversation of fiushionable life, and
before the distinction between rusticity and elegance, art
and nature, was lost (as it afterwards was) in a general
diffdsion of knowledge, and the reciprocal advantages of
civil intercourse. It is to be remarked, that the union
of the three gradations of artificial elegance and courtly
accomplishments in one class, of the aJOEectation of them
in another, and of absolute rusticity in a third, forms the
highest point of perfection of the comedies of this period,

* A well-known character in Yanbrugh's comedy of the 'Bo-
lapBe/— -Ed.

Shdkspeare and Ben Jonson. 47

as we may see in Yanbrugh's Lord ij^ppington, Sir Ttmbelly
Clumsy, and Miss Hoyden ; Lady Townly, Count Basset,
and John Moody ; in Oongreve's Millamant, Lady Wish-
fort, Witwoud, Sir Wilful Witwoud, and the rest.

Li another point of yiew, or with respect to that part
of comedy which relates to gallantry and intrigue, the
difference between Shakspeare's comic heroines and those
of a later period may be referred to the same distinction
between natural and artificial life, between the world of
iancj and the world of fashion. The refinements of
romantic passion arise out of the imagination brooding
over "airy nothing," or over a favourite object, where
^ love's golden shaft hath killed the flock of all affections
else :" whereas the refinements of this passion in genteel
comedy, or in every-day life, may be said to arise out of
repeated observation and experience, diverting and fritter-
ing away the first impressions ot things by a multiplicity
of objects, and producing, not enthusiasm, but fastidious-
ness or giddy dissipation. For the one a comparatively
rude age and strong feelings are best fitted ; for " there
the mind must minister to itself:" to the other, the
progress of society and a knowledge of the world are
essential ; for here the effect does not depend on leaving
the mind concentred in itself but on the wear and tear
of the heart, amidst the complex and rapid movements
of the artificial machinery of society, and on the arbitrary
subjection of the natural course of the affections to every
slightest fluctuation of fashion, caprice, or opinion.
Thus Olivia, in ^ Twelfth Night,' has but one admirer of
equal rank with herself, and but one love, to whom she
innocently plights her hand and heart ; or if she had a
thousand lovers, she would be the sole object of their
adoration and burning vows, without a rival. The
heroine of romance and poetry sits secluded in the bowers
of fancy, sole queen and arbitress of all hearts; and
as the character is one of imagination, " of solitude and

48 The English Comic Writers.

melancholy mufiing bom/' so it may be best drawn from
the imagination. Millamant, in the * Way of the World,'
on the contrary, who is the fine lady or heroine of comedy,
has so many lovers, that she surfeits on admiration, till
it becomes indifferent to her ; so many rivals, that she
is forced to put on a thousand airs of languid affectation
to mortify and vex them more ; so many offers, that she
at last gives her hand to the man of her heart, rather to
escape the persecution of their addresses, and out of
levity and disdain, than from any serious choice of her
own. This is a comic character ; its essence consists in
making light of things from familiarity and use, and as
it is formed by habit and outward circiunstances, so it
requires actual observation, and an acquaintance with the
modes of artificial life, to describe it with the utmost
possible grace and precision. Congreve, who had every
other opportunity, was but a young man when he wrote
this character ; and that makes the miracle the greater.

] I do not, in short, consider comedy as exactly an afi&ir '
of the heart or the imagination ; and it is for this reason
only that I think Shakspeare's comedies deficient. I do

V not, however, wish to give a preference to * any comedies
over his; but I do perceive a difference between his
comedies and some others that are, notwithstanding,
excellent in their way, and I have endeavoured to point
out in what this difference consists, as well as I could.
Finally, I will not say that he had not as great a natural
genius for comedy as any one ; but I may venture to say,
that he had not the same artificial models and regulated
mass of fashionable absurdity or elegance to work upon.

The superiority of Shakspeare's natural genius for
comedy cannot be better shown than by a comparison
between his comic characters and those of Ben Jonson.
The matter is the same : but how different is the manner 1
The one gives fair play to nature and his own genius,

* Original reads of, — ^Ed.

ShaJcspeare and Ben Jonson, 49

while the other trusts almost entirely to imitation and
custom. Shakspeare takes his groundwork in individual
character and the manners of his age, and raises from them I
a fantastical and delightful superstructure of his own : the /
other takes the same groundwork in matter-of-fact, but />
hardly ever rises above it ; and the more he strives, is but
the more enveloped " in the crust of formality " and the
crude circumstantials of his subject. His genius (not to
profane an old and still venerable name, but merely to
make myself understood) resembles the grub more than
the butterfly, plods and grovels on, wants wings to wanton
in the idle summer's air, and catch the golden light of
poetry. Be» Jonson is a great borrower from the works
of others, and a plagiarist even from nature : so little free-
dom is there in his imitations of her, and he appears to
receive her bounty like an alms. His works read like
translations, from a certain cramp manner, and want of
adaptation. Shakspeare, even when he takes whole pas-
sages from books, does it with a spirit, felicity, and
mastery over his subject, that instantly makes them his
own ; and shows more independence of mind and original
thinking in what he plunders without scruple, than Ben
Jonson often did in his most studied passages, forced
&om the sweat and labour of his brain. His style is as
dry, as literal, and meagre, as Shakspeare's is exuberant,
liberal, and unrestrained. The one labours hard, lashes
himself up, and produces little pleasure with all his fidelity
and tenaciousness of purpose : the other, without putting
himself to any trouble, or thinking about his success,
performs wonders,—

" Does mad and fantastic execution,
Engaging and redeeming of himself.
With such a careless force and forceless* cure.
As if that luck, in very spite ot cuunfaig.
Bad him win all."

* Unloroed.

[.

50 The English Comio Writers.

There are people who cannot taste olives — and I cannot
much relish Ben Jonson, though I have taken some pains
to do it, and went to the task with every sort of good-will.
I do not deny his power or his merit ; far from it : but it
is to me of a repulsive and unamiable kind. He was a
great man in himseK, but one cannot readily sympathize
with him. His works, as the characteristic productions of
an individual mind, or as records of the manners of a
particular age, cannot be valued too highly; but they
have little charm for the mere general reader. Schlegel
observes, that whereas Shakspeare gives the springs of
human nature, which are always the same, or sufficiently
80 to be interesting and intelligible : Jonson chiefly gives
' the humours of men, as connected with certain arbitrary
or conventional modes of dress, action, and expression,
which are intelligible only while they last, and not very
interesting at any time. Shakspeare's characters are men ;
Ben Jonson's are more like machines, governed by mere
routine, or by the convenience of the poet, whose property
they are. In reading the one, we are let into the minds
of his characters, we see the play of their thoughts, how
their humours flow and work : the author takes a range
over nature, and has an eye to every object or occasion
that presents itself to set off and heighten the ludicrous
character he is describing. His humour (so to speak)
bubbles, sparkles, and finds its way in all directions, like a
natural spring. In Ben Jonson it is, as it were, confined
in a leaden cistern, where it stagnates and corrupts ; or [is]
directed only through certain artificial pipes and conduits,
to answer a given purpose. The comedy of this author is
far from being " lively, audible, and fuU of vent :" it is
for the most part obtuse, obscure, forced, and tedious. He
wears out a jest to the last shred and coarsest grain. His
imagination fastens instinctively on some one mark or
sign by which he designates the individual, and never lets
it go, for fear of not meeting with any other means to

\

ShaJcspeare and Ben Jonson. 51

express biinseK by. A cant phrase, an odd gesture, an
old-fashioned regimental uniform, a wooden leg, a tobaceo-
box, or a hacked sword, are the standing topics by which
he embodies his characters to the imagination. They are
cut and dried comedy ; the letter, not the spirit of wit
and humour. Each of his characters has a particular cue,
a professional badge which he wears and is known by, and
by nothing else. Thus there is no end of Captain Otter,
his Bull, his Bear, and his Horse, which are no joke at
first, and do not become so by being repeated twenty
times. It is a mere matter of fact, that some landlord of
his acquaintance called his drinking cups by these ridicu-
lous names ; but why need we be told so more than once,
or indeed at all ? There is almost a total want of variety,
fancy, relief, and of those delightful transitions which
abound, for instance, in Shakspeare's tragi-comedy. In
Ben Jonsdn, we find ourselves generally in low company,
and we see no hope of getting out of it. He is like a
person who fastens upon a disagreeable subject, and can-
not be persuaded to leave it. His comedy, in a word, has
not what Shakspeare somewhere calls " bless'd conditions."
It is cross-grained, mean, and mechanical. It is handi-
craft wit. Squalid poverty, sheer ignorance, bare-faced
impudence, or idiot imbecility, are his dramatic commoU'-
places — things that provoke pity or disgust, instead of
laughter. His portraits are caricatures by dint of their
very likeness, being extravagant tautologies of themselves;
as his plots are improbable by an excess of consistency;
for he goes thorough-stitch with whatever he takes in
hand, mak^s one contrivance answer all purposes, and
every obstacle give way to a predetermined theory. For
instance, nothing can be more incredible than the mer-
cenary conduct of Corvino, in delivering up his wife to
the palsied embraces of Yolpone ; and yet the poet does
not seem in the least to boggle at the incongruity of it :
but the more it is in keeping with the absurdiiy of the

£ 2

62 The English Comic Writers.

rest of tlie fable, and the more it advances it to an in-
credible catastrophe, the more he seems to dwell upon it
with complacency and a sort of wilfdl exaggeration, as if
it were a logical discoveiy or corollary &om well-known
premises. He would no more be baffled in the working
ont a plot, than some people will be baffled in an argu-
ment. ^ If to be wise were to be obstinate," our author
might have laid signal claim to this title. Old Ben was
of a scholastic turn, and had dealt a little in the occult
sciences and controversial divinity. He was a man of
strong crabbed sense, retentive memory, acute observation,
great fidelity of description and keeping in character, [with]
a power of working out an idea so as to make it painfully
true and oppressive, and with great honesty and manliness
of feeling, as well as directness of imderstanding : but
-with all this, he wanted, to my thinking, that genial spirit
of enjoyment and finer fancy, which constitute the essence
of poetry and of wit. The sense of reality exercised a
despotic sway over his mind, and equally weighed down
and clogged his perception of the beautiful or the ridicu-
lous. He had a keen sense of what was true and false,
but not of the difference between the agreeable and dis-
agreeable; or if he had, it was by his understanding
rather than his imagination, by rule and method, not by
sympathy or intuitive perception of « the gayest, happiest
attitude of things." There was nothing spontaneous, no
impulse or ease about his genius : it was all forced, up-
hill work, making a toil of a pleasure. And hence his
overweening admiration of his own works, from the effort
they had cost him, and the apprehension that they were
not proportionably admired by others, who knew nothing
of the pangs and throes of his Muse in chUd-bearing. In
his satirical descriptions he seldom stops short of the
lowest and most offensive point of meanness ; and in his
serious poetry he seems to repose with complacency only
en the pedantic and far-fetched, the uUima Thule of his

Shakspeare and Ben Jonsan. 53

knowledge. He has a conscience of letting nothing
escape the reader that he knows. Aliquando mfflaminandus
erat, is as true of him as it was of Shakspeare, but in a
quite different sense. He is dc^gedly bent upon fatiguing
you with a favourite idea; whereas, Shakspeare over-
powers and distracts attention by the throng and indis-
criminate variety of his. His ' Sad Shepherd ' is a beautiful
fragment. It was a fftvourite with the late Mr. Home
Tooke : indeed it is no wonder, for there was a sort of
sympathy between the two men. Ben was like the modem
wit and philosopher, a grammarian and a hard-headed
thinker. — There is an amusing account of Ben Jonson's
private manners in * HoweFs Letters,' which is not gene-
rally known, and which I shall here extract.*

•* To Sir Thomas Hawk, KU

« Sib, Westminster, 5th April, 1636.

" I was invited yesternight to a solemn supper by B. J., where
you were deeply remembered ; there was good company, excellent
cheer, choice wines, and jovial welcome: one thing intervened,
which almost spoiled the relish of the rest, that B. began to engross
all the discourse, to vapour extremely of himself, and, by vilifying
others, to magnify his own Muse. T. Ca. (Tom Carew) buzzed me
in the ear, that though Ben had barrelled up a great deal of know-
ledge, yet it seems he had not read the ethics, which, among other
precepts of morality, forbid self-conmiendation, declaring it to be an
ill-favoured solecism in good manners. It made me think upon the
lady (not very young) who having a good while given her guests
neat entertainment, a capon being brought upon the table, instead
of a spoon, she took a mouthful of claret, and spouted it into the poop
of the hollow bird : such an accident happened in this entertainment :
you know — Proprio laus sordet in are : be a man^s breath ever so
sweet, yet it makes one*s praise stink, if he makes his own mouth the
conduit-pipe of it. But for my part I am content to dispense with
the Boman infirmity of Ben, now that time hath snowed upon his
pericranium. You know Ovid and (your) Horace were subject to
this humour, the first bursting out into—

Jamque opus exegij quod nee Jovis ira nee ignis, &g.

* * Epistolffi HoeliansB,' edit. 1754, pp. 323, 324.— Ed.

54 The English Comic Writers,

Tho other iuto—

Exegi monumentum ssre perennius, &c.

As also Cicero, while he forced himself into this hexameter: O
fortunatam naiamy me constde'RomcCm! There is another reason
that excnseth B., which is, that if one be allowed to love the natural
issue of his body, why not that of the brain, which is of a spiritual
and more noble extraction?"

The concurring testimony of all his contemporaries agrees
with his own candid avowal, as to Ben Jonson's personal
character. He begins, for instance, an epistle to Drayton
in these words —

" Michael, by some 'tis doubted if I be
A friend at all ; or if at all, to thee — "

Of Shakspeare's comedies I have already given a detailed
accoimt, which is before the public, and which I shall not
repeat of course : but I shall give a cursory sketch of the
principal of Ben Jonson's. The * Silent Woman ' is built
upon the supposition of an old citizen disliking noise,
who takes to Wife Epicene (a supposed young lady) for the
reputation of her silence, and with a view to disinherit his
nephew, who has laughed at his infirmity; when the
ceremony is no sooner over than the bride turns out a
very shrew, his house becomes a very Babel of noises, and
he offers his nephew his own terms to unloose the matri-
monial knot, which is done by proving that Epicene is no
woman. There is some humour in the leading character,
but too much is made out of it, not in the way of Moliere'&
exaggerations, which, though extravagant, are fantastical
and ludicrous, but of serious, plodding, minute prolixity.
The first meeting between Morose and Epicene is well
managed, and does not '* o'erstep the modesty of nature,"
&om the very restraint imposed by the situation of the
parties — ^by the affected taciturnity of the one, and the
other's singular dislike of noise. The whole story, from
the beginning to the end, is a gratuitous assumption, and
the height of improbability. The author, in sustaining

Shak^peare and Ben Jonson. 55

tlie weight of his plot, seems like a balance-master who
supports a nmnber of people, piled one upon another, on
his hands, his knees, his shoulders, but with a great effort
on his own part, and with a painful effect to the beholders.
The scene between Sir Amorous La Foole and Sir John
Daw, in which they are frightened by a feigned report of
each other's courage, into a submission to all sorts of indig-
nities, which they construe into flattering civilities, is the
same device as that in 'Twelfth Night', between Sir
Andrew Aguecheek and Viola, carried to a paradoxical
and revolting excess. Ben Jonson had no idea of decorum
in his dramatic Actions, which Milton says is the principal
thing, but went on caricaturiiig himself and others till he
could go no farther in extravagance, and sink no lower in
meanness. The titles of his drainatia jpersoncB^ such as Sir
Amorous La Foole, Truewit, Sir John Daw, Sir Politic
Wouldbe, &c. &c. which are significant and knowing, show
his determination to overdo everything by thus letting you
into their characters beforehand, and afterwards proving
their pretensions by their names. Thus Peregrine, in
* Volpone,' says, " Your name, Sir ? Folitich, My name
is Politick Would-be." To which Peregrine replies, " Oh,
that speaks him." How it should, if it was his real name^
and not a nick-name given him on purpose by the author,
is hard to conceive. This play was Dryden's favourite.
It is indeed full of sharp, biting sentences against the
women, of which he was fond. The following may serve
as a specimen. Truewit says, "Did I not tell thee,
Dauphine ? Why, all their actions are governed by crude
opinion, without reason or cause : they know not why they
do anything ; but, as they are informed, believe, judge,
praise, condemn, love, hate, and in emulation one of
another, do all these things alike. Only they have a
natural inclination sways 'em generally to the worst, when
they are left to themselves." This is a cynical sentence ;
and we may say of the rest of his opinions, that *' even

56 The English Comic Writers.

ihougli we should hold them to be trne, yet is it slander
to have them so set down." The women in this play
indeed justify the author's severity ; they are altogether
abominable. They have an utter want of principle and
decency, and are equally without a sense of pleasure, taste,
or elegance. Madame Haughty, Madame Centaur, and
Madame Mavis, form the College, as it is here pedan-
tically called. They are a sort of candidates for being
upon the town, but cannot find seducers, and a sort of
blue-stockings, before the invention of letters. Mistress
Epicene, the silent gentlewoman, turns out not to be a
woman at all ; which is not a very pleasant denouemefd of
the plot, and is itself an incident apparently taken from
the blundering blindman's-buff conclusion of the ' Merry
Wives of Windsor.* What Shakspeare might introduce
by an accident, and as a mere passing jest, Ben Jonson
would set about building a whole play upon. The direc-
tions for making love given by Truewit, the author's
favourite, discover great knowledge and shrewdness of
observation, mixed with the acuteness of malice, and
approach to the best style of comic dialogue. But I must
refer to the play itself for them.

The * Fox,' or * Volpone * is his best play. It is prolix
and improbable, but intense and powerful. It is written
con amore. It is made up of cheats and dupes, and the
author is at home among them. He shows his hatred of
the one and contempt for the other, and makes them set
one another off to great advantage. There are several
striking dramatic contrasts in this play, where the Fox lies
perdue to watch his prey, where Mosca is the dexterous go-
between, outwitting his gulls, his employer, and himself
and where each of the gaping legacy-hunters, the lawyer,
the merchant, and the miser, eagerly occupied with the
ridiculousness of the other's pretensions, is blind only to
the absurdity of his own : but the whole is worked up too
mechanically, and our credulity overstretched at last

Shakspeare and Ben Jonson. 67

TBYolts into scepticism, and our attention overtasked flags

into drowsiness. This play seems formed on the model of

Plantns, in unity of plot and interest ; and old Ben, in

emulating his classic model, appears to have done his best.

There is the same caustic unsparing severity in it as in

his other works. His patience is tried to the utmost.

His words drop gall.

'^ Hood an ass with reverend purple,
So you can hide his too ambitious ears.
And he shall pass for a cathedral doctor."

The scene between Volpone, Mosca, Voltore, Corvino,
find Corbaccio, at the outset, will show the dramatic
power in the conduct of this play, and will be my justifi-
cation in what I have said of the literal tenaciousness (to
A degree that is repulsive) of the author's imaginary
descriptions.

'Every Man in his Humour' is a play well-known to the
public. This play acts better than it reads. The pathos
in the principal character, Kitely, is '' as dry as the
remainder biscuit after a voyage." There is, however, a
certain good sense, discrimination, or logic of passion in
the part, which affords excellent hints for an able actor,
and which, if properly pointed, gives it considerable force
on the stage. Bobadil is the only actually striking
character in the play, and the real hero of the piece. His
well-known proposal for the pacification of Europe, by
killing some twenty of them, each his man a day, is as
^ood as any other that has been suggested up to the
present moment. His extravagant affectation, his bluster-
ing and cowardice, are an entertaining medley ; and his
final defeat and exposure, though exceedingly humorous,
are the most affecting part of the story. Brain worm is a
particularly diy and abstruse character. We neither
know his business nor his motives: his plots are as
intricate as they are useless, and as the ignorance of those
lie imposes upon is wonderful. This is the impression in

58 The English Comic Wriiers.

reading it. Tet from the bustle and activity of this cha-
racter on the stage, the changes of dress, the variety of
affected tones and gipsy jargon, and the limping affected
gestures, it is a very amusing theatrical exhibition. The
rest, Master Matthew, Master Stephen, Cob and Cob's
wife, were living in the sixteenth century. That is all
we know of them. But from the very oddity of their
appearance and behaviour, they have a very droll and
even picturesque effect when acted. It seems a revival of
the dead. We believe in their existence when we see them.
As an example of the power of the stage in giving reality
and interest to what otherwise would be without it, I
might mention the scene in which Brainworm praises
Master Stephen's leg. The folly here is insipid from its
beiDg seemingly carried to an excess, till we see it ; and
then we laugh the more at it, the more incredible we
thought it before.

^ Bartholomew Fair ' is chiefly remarkable for the exhi-
bition of odd humours and tumbler's tricks, and is on
that account amusing to read once. 'The Alchymist'
is the most feunous of this author's comedies, though I
think it does not deserve its reputation. It contains all
that is quaint, dreary, obsolete, and hopeless in this once-
famed art, but not the golden dreams and splendid
disappointments. We have the mere circumstantials of the
sublime science, pots and kettles, aprons and bellows,
crucibles and diagrams, all the refuse and rubbish, not the
essence, the true elixir mtoB, There is, however, one
glorious scene between Surly and Sir Epicure Mammon,
which is the finest example I know of dramatic sophistry,
or of an attempt to prove the existence of a thing by an
imposing description of its effects : but compared with
this, the rest of the play is a captxt mortuum. The scene
I allude to is the following : —

*• Mammon, Come on. Sir. Now, you set your foot on shore.
In Novo Orbe ; here's the rich Pern :

Shakspeare and Ben Jonson. 5^

And there within, Sir, are the golden mines,
Great Solomon's Ophir I He was sailing to 't
Three years, but we have reached it in ten months.
This is the day wherein, to all my friends,
I will pronounce the happy word. Be rich ;
This day you shall bo Spectatissimi.
You shall no more deal with the hollow dye.
Or the jErail card. ♦»♦♦♦»

You shall start up young viceroys.
And have your punks and pnnketees, my Surly,
And unto thee, I speak it first, Be bich.
Where is my Subtle, there ? Within, ho !

Face, {withiiii] Sir, he'll come to you, by-aiid-by.

Mam. That is his JB^edrake,
His Lungs, his Zephyrus, he that puffs his coals,
Till he firk nature up in her own centre.
You are not faithful, Sir. This night 111 change
All that is metal in my house to gold :
And early in the morning, will I send
To all the plumbers and the pewterers
And buy their tin and lead up ; and to Lothbury,
For all the copper.

Surly. What, and turn that too ?

Mam. Yes, and I'll purchase Devonshire and Cornwall,
And make them perfect Indies ! You admire now ?

Surly. No, faith.

Mam. But when you see th' effects of the great medicine*
Of which one part projected on a hundred
Of Mercury, or Venus, or the Moon,
Shall turn it to as many of the Sun;
Nay, to a thousand, so ad infinitum ,
You will believe me.

Surly. Yes, when I see't, I will —

Mam. Ha! why?
Do you think I fable with you ? I assure yoou
He that has once the flower of the Sun,
The perfect ruby, which we call Elixir
Not only can do that, but, by its virtue.
Can confer honour, love, respect, long life 5
Give safety, valour, yea and victory,
To whom he will. In eight and twenty daya»
I'll make an old man of fourscore a child.

Surly. No doubt ; he's that already.

Mam. Nay, I mean,

60 The English Comie Writers.

Bestoro his years, renew him, like an eagle.

To the fifth age ; make him get sons and daughters,

Toung giants ; as our philosophers have done.

The ancient patriarchs, afore the flood,

But taking, once a week, on a knife's point,

The quantity of a grain of mustard of it ;

Become stout Marses, and beget young Cupids.

4i * * ♦ » *

You are incredulous.

Surly. Faith, I have a humour,
I would not willingly be gull'd. Your stone
Cannot transmute me.

Mam, Pertinax Surly,
Will you believe antiquity? records?
Ill show you a book where Moses and his sister.
And Solomon have written of the art ;
Ay, and a treatise penn*d by Adam —

Surly, Howl

Mam, Of the philosopher's stone, and in High Dutch.

Surly. Did Adam write, Sir, in High Dutch?

Mam. He did ;

Which proves it was the primitive tongue.
* • * * * *

{Enter Face, as a servant.
How now I
Do we succeed ? Is our day come, and holds it?

FoM. The evening will set red upon you. Sir :
You havo colour for it, crimson ; the red ferment
Has done his office : three hours hence prepare you
To see projection.

Mam. Pertinax, my Surly,
Again I say to thee, aloud, Be rich.
This day thou shalt have ingots ; and to-morrow
Give lords the afl&ont ♦ » ♦ Where's thy master?

Fa^. At his prayers, Sir ; he,
Oood man, he's doing his devotions
For the success.

Mam, Lungs, I will set a period
To all thy labours ; thou shalt be the master
Of my seraglio ....
For I do mean

To have a list of wives and concubines
Equal with Solomon . ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
I will have all my beds blown up, not stuft:

ShaJcspeare and Ben Jonson, 61

Down is too hard ; and then, mine oval room

Fill'd with such pictures as Tiberius took

From Elephantis, and dull Aretine

But coldly imitated. Then, my glasses

Gut in more subtle angles, to disperse

And multiply the figures, as I walk. ♦ ♦ * My mists

ril have of perfume, yapoured about the room

To lose ourselves in ; and my baths, like pits

To &11 into : from whence we will come forth,

And roll us dry in gossamer and roses.

Is it arriv'd at ruby ? Where I spy

A wealthy citizen, or a rich lawyer/

Have a sublimed pure wife, unto that fellow

ril send a thousand pound to be my cuckold.

Face, And I shall carry it ?

Mam. No. 1*11 have no bawds.
But others and mothers. They will do it best.
Best of all others. And my flatterers
Shall be the pure[st] and gravest of divines
That I can get for money.

"We will be brave, Puffe, now we have the medicine.
My meat shall all come in, in Indian shells.
Dishes of agate set in gold, and studded
With emeralds, sapphires, hyacinths, and rubies.
The tongues of carps, dormice, and camels' heels
Boil'd in the spirit of Sol, and dissolved pearl,
Apicius' diet 'gainst the epilepsy ;
And I will eat these broths witli spoons of amber.
Headed with diamond and carbuncle.
My footboys ^all eat pheasants, calver'd salmons,.
Knots, godwits, lampreys ; I myself will have
The beards of barbels serv'd instead of salads ;
Oil'd mushrooms ; and the swelling unctuous paps
Of a fat pregnant sow, newly cut off,
Drest with an exquisite and poignant sauce ;
For which I'll say unto my cook, Tlter^s gdd%
Ooforthf and he a knight.

Face. Sir, I'll go look
A little, how it heightens.

Manu Do. My shirts
m have of taffeta-sarsnet, soft and light
As cobwebs ; and for all my other raiment,
It shall be such as might provoke the Persian,
Were he to teach the world riot anew.

62 Ihe English Comic Writers.

My gloYos of fishes and birds' skins, perfum'd
With gums of Paradise and eastern air.

Surly, And do you think to have the stone with this ?

Mam. No, I do think t' have all this with the stonu.

Surly. Why, I have heard, he must be homofrugi,
A pious, holy, and religious man.
One free from mortal sin, a very virgin.

Mam. That makes it, Sir, he is so ; but I buy it.
My venture brings it me. He, honest wretch,
A notable superstitious, good soul.
Has worn his knees bare and his slippers bald
With prayer and fiststing for it, and. Sir, let him
Do it alone, for me, still ; here he comes ;
Not a profane word afore him : 'tis poison." *

I have only to add a few words on Beamnont and
Fletcher. * Enle a Wife and Have a Wife,' the ' Chances,'
and the ^ Wild Goose Chase,' the original of the ' Inconstant^'
are superior in style and execution to anything of Ben
Jonson's. They are, indeed, some of the best comedies on
the stage ; and one proof that they are so, is, that they
still hold possession of it. They show the utmost alacrity
of invention in contriving ludicrous distresses, and the
utmost spirit in bearing up against, or impatience and
irritation under, them. * Don John, in the ' Chances,' is the
heroic in comedy. Leon, in * Bule a Wife and Have a
Wife,' is a fine exhibition of the bom gentleman and
natural fool : the Copper Captain is sterling to this hour :
his mistress, Estifania, only died the other day with
Mrs. Jordan if and the two grotesque females, in the same
play, act better than the Witches in ' Macbeth.'

* Act II. Scene 1.

t This was written in 1818.— En.

( 68 )

LECTUEE III.

ON OOWLET, BUTLEB, SUCKLING, ETHEREGB, ETC.

The metaphysical poets or wits of the age of James and
Charles I., whose style was adopted and carried to a more
dazzling and fantastic excess by Cowley in the following
reign, after which it declined, and gave place almost
entirely to the poetry of observation and reasoning, are
thus happily characterised by Dr. Johnson.

" The metaphysical poets were men of learning, and to
show their learning was their whole endeavour : but
unluckily resolving to show it in rhyme, instead of writing
poetry, they only wrote verses, and very often such verses
as stood the trial of the finger better than of the ear ; for
the modulation was so imperfect, that they were only
found to be verses by counting the syllables.

^'If the father of criticism has rightly denominated
poetry tcxvt] jufirfrtK'^, an imitative art, these writers will,
without great wrong, lose their right to the name of poets,
for they cannot be said to have imitated anything ; they
neither copied nature nor life ; neither painted the forms
of matter, nor represented the operations of intellect."

The whole of the account is well worth reading : it was
a subject for which Dr. Johnson's powers both of thought
and expression were better fitted than any other man's.
If he had had the same capacity for following the flights
of a truly poetic imagination, or for feeling the finer
touches of nature, that he had felicity and force in detect-
ing and exposing the aberrations from the broad and
beaten path of propriety and common sense, he would

64 The English Comic Writers.

have amply deserved the reputation he has acquired as a
philosophical critic.

The writers here referred to (such as Donne, [Sir John]
Pavies, Crashaw, and others) not merely mistook learning
for poetry — they thought anything was poetry that differed
from ordinary prose and the natural impression of things,
by being intricate, far-fetched, and improbable. Their
style was not so properly learned as metaphysical ; that is
to say, whenever, by any violence done to their ideas, they
could make out an abstract likeness or possible ground of
comparison, they forced the image, whether learned or
vulgar, into the service of the Muses. Anything would
do to " hitch into a rhyme," no matter whether striking or
agreeable or not, so that it would puzzle the reader to
discover the meaning, and if there was the most remote
circumstance, however trifling or vague, for the pretended
comparison to hinge upon. They brought ideas together
not the most, but the least, like, and of which the
collision produced not light, but obscurity — served not to
strengthen, but to confound. Their mystical verses read
like riddles or an allegory. They neither belong to the
class of lively or severe poetry. They have not the force
of the one, nor the gaiety of the other ; but are an ill-
assorted, unprofitable union of the two together, applying
to serious subjects that quaint and partial style of allusion
which fits only what is light and ludicrous, and building
the most laboured conclusions on the most fantastical and
slender premises. The object of the poetry of imagina-
tion is to raise or adorn one idea by another more striking
or nyjre beautiful : the object of these writers was to match
any one idea with any other idea, for better for worse, as
we say, and whether anything was gained by the change
of condition or not. The object of the poetry of the
passions again is to illustrate any strong feeling, by show-
ing the same feeling as connected with objects or cir-
cumstances more palpable and touching; but here the

Cowley^ Butler, (Sec. 65

object was to strain and distort tlie immediate feeling into
some barely possible consequence or recondite analogy,
in wbicb it required the utmost stretch of misapplied
ingenuity to trace the smallest connection with the
original impression. In short, the poetry of this period
was strictly the poetry not of ideas, but of definitions : it
proceeded in mode and figure, by genus and specific
difference ; and was the logic of the schools, or an oblique
and forced construction of dry, literal matter-of-fact,
decked out in a robe of glittering conceits, and clogged
with the halting shackles of verse. The imagination of
the writers, instead of being conversant with the face of
nature, or the secrets of the heart, was lost in the laby-
rinths of intellectual abstraction, or entangled in the
technical quibbles and impertinent intricacies of language.
The complaint so often made, and here repeated, is not of
the want of power in these men, but of the waste of it;
not of the absence of genius, but the abuse of it. They
had (many of them) great talents committed to their trust,
richness of thought, and depth of feeling ; but they chose
to hide them (as much as they possibly could) under a
false show of learning and unmeaning subtlety. From
the style which they had systematically adopted, they
thought nothing done till they had perverted simplicity
into affectation, and spoiled nature by art. They seemed
to think there was an irreconcileable opposition between
genius, as well as grace, and nature ; tried to do without,
or else constantly to thwart her ; left nothing to her out-
ward "impress," or spontaneous impulses, but made a
point of twisting and torturing almost every subject they
took in hand, till they had fitted it to the mould of their
self-opinion and the previous febrications of their own
fancy, like those who pen acrostics in the shape of
pyramids, and cut out trees into the shape of peacocks.
Their chief aim is to make you wonder at the writer, not
to interest you in the subject ; and by an incessant craving

F

66 The English Comic Writers,

after admiration, they have lost what they might have
gained with less extravagance and affectation. So Cowper»
who was of a quite opposite school, speaks feelinsly of
the misapplication of Cowley's poetical genius.

*' And though reclaimed by modem lights
From an erroneous taste,
I cannot but lament thy splendid wit
Entangled in the cobwebs of the schools."

Donne, who was considerably before Cowley, is without
his ^Etncy, but was more recondite in his logic, and rigid
in his descriptions. He is hence led, particularly in his
satires, to tell disagreeable truths in as disagreeable a
way as possible, or to convey a pleasing and affecting
thought (of which there are many to be found in his other
writings) by the harshest means, and with the most painful
effort. His Muse suffers continual pangs and throes.
His thoughts are delivered by the Cassarean operation.
The sentiments, profound and tender as they often are,
are stifled in the expression; and '' heaved pantingly
; forth," are "buried quick again" under the ruins and
> rubbish of analytical distinctions. It is like poetry
waking from a trance, with an eye bent idly on the out-
ward world, and half-forgotten feelings crowding about
the heart : with vivid impressions, dim notions, and dis-
jointed words. The following may serve as instances of
beautiful or impassioned reflections losing themselves in
obscure and di£&cult applications. He has some lines to
a Blossom, which begin thus :

" Little think'st thou, poor flow'r,
Whom I have watched six or seven days,
And seen thy birth, and seen what every hour
Gave to thy growth, thee to this height to raise.
And now dost laugh and triumph on this bough,

Little think*st thou
That it will freeze anon, and that I shall
To-morrow find thee fiairn, or not at all."

This simple and delicate description is only introduced aa

Cowley, Butler, &c. 67

a foundation for an elaborate metaphysical conceit as a
parallel to it, in the next stanza.

" Little think'at thou (poor heart
That laboor'st yet to nestle thee,
And think'st by hovering here to get a part
In a forbidden or forbidding tree,
And hop'st her stiflfness by long siege to bow :)

Little think'gt thou.
That thou to-morrow, ere the sun doth wake,
Must with this sun and me a journey take."

This is but a lame and impotent conclusion from so
delightful a beginning. He thus notices the circumstance
of his wearing his late wife's hair about his arm, in a
littlepoem which is called the * Funeral' :

•' Whoever comes to shroud me, do not harm
Nor question much
That subtle wreath of hair about mine arm ;
The mystery, the sign you must not touch."

The scholastic reason he gives quite dissolves the charm
of tender and touching grace in the sentiment itself —

** For 'tis my outward soul,

Viceroy to that, which imto heaven being gone.

Will leave this to control,
And keep these limbs, her provinces, from dissolution."

Again, the following lines, the title of which is ' Love's
Deity,' are highly characteristic of this author's manner,
in which the thoughts are inlaid in a costly but imperfect
mosaic-work.

'* I long to talk with some old lover's ghost,
Who died before the God of Love was horn :
I cannot think that he, who then lov'd most,
Sunk so low, as to love one which did scorn.
But since this God produced a destiny,
And that vice-nature, custom, lets it be ;
1 must love her that loves not me."

The stanza in the ' Epithalamion on [Frederic of Bohemia]
Count Palatine of the Bhine,' has been often quoted against

V 2

68 The English Comic Writers.

him, and is an almost irresistible illustration of the extra-
iragonces to which this kind of writing, which turns upon
a pivot of words and possible allusions, is liable. Speak-
ing of the bride and bridegroom, he says, by way of serious
compliment —

*' Here lies a she-Sun, and a he-Moon there.

She gives the best light to his sphere ;

Or each is both and all, and.so

They unto one another nothing owe."

His love-verses and epistles to his friends give the most
favourable idea of Donne. His satires are too clerical.*
He shows, if I may so speak, too much disgust, and, at the
same time, too much contempt for vice. His dogmatical
invectives hardly redeem the nauseousness of his descrip-
tions, and compromise the imagination of his readers
more than they assist their reason. The satirist does not
write with the same authority as the divine, and should
use his poetical privileges more sparingly. " To the pure
all things are pure," is a maxim which a man like
Dr. Donne may be justified in applying to himseK ; but
he might have recollected that it could not be construed
to extend to the generality of his readers without henefit of
clergy.

Bishop Hall's ' Satires ' are coarse railing in verse, and
hardly that. Pope has, however, contrived to avail him-
self of them in some of his imitations.

Sir John Davies is the author of a poem on the * Soul,'
and of one on ' Dancing.'f In both he shows great in-
genuity, and sometimes terseness and vigour. In the last
of these two poems his fancy pirouettes in a very lively
and agreeable manner, but something too much in the
Btyle of a French opera-dancer, with sharp angular turns,

* Yet these satires were among his most youthful performances.
A MS. copy of them in the Harleian collection is dated 1593. — Ed.

t Also of epigrams, a translation of many of the Psalms, and of
several miscellaneous pieces, all included in Mr. Grosart's recent
edition. He has also left some prose writings behind him. — En.

Cowley, Butler, &c. 69

and repeated deviations from the faultless line of simplicity
and nature.

Crashaw was a writer of the same ambitioue stamp,
whose imagination was rendered still more inflammable
by the ferrours of fematicism, and who having been con-
verted from Protestantism to Popery (a weakness to which
the " seething brains " of the poets of this period were
prone) by some visionary appearance of the Virgin Mary,
poured out his devout raptures and zealous enthusiasm in
a torrent of poetical hyperboles. The celebrated Latin
epigram on the miracle of our Saviour, " The water
blushed into wine," is in his usual hectic manner. His
translation of the contest between the Musician and the
Nightingale is the best specimen of his powers.

Davenanf s ' Qondibert ' is a tissue of stanzas, all aiming
to be wise and witiy, each containing something in itself,
and the whole together amoimting to nothing. The
iihoughts separately require so much attention to under-
stand them, and arise so little out of the narrative, that
they with difficulty sink into the mind, and have no
common feeling of interest to recall or link them together
afterwards. The general style may be judged of by
these two memorable lines in the description of the
skeleton chamber.

'^ Yet on that wall hangs he too, who so thought,
And she dried by him whom that he obeyed.*'

Mr. Hobbes, in a prefatory discourse, has thrown away a
good deal of powerful logic and criticism in recommenda-
tion of the plan of his friend's poem. Davenant, who was
poet-laureate to Charles 11., wrote several masques and
plays which were well received in his time, but have not
come down with equal applause to us.

Marvel (on whom I have already bestowed such praise
as I could, for elegance and tenderness in his descriptive
poems) in his satires and witty pieces was addicted to the
a^ected and involved style here reprobated, as in his

o^

70 The English Comic Writers.

' Flecknoe ' (the origin of Dryden's * Macflecknoe ') and in
his satire on the Dutch. As an instance of this forced, far«
fetched method of treating his subject, he says, in ridicule
of the Hollanders, that when their dykes overflowed, the
fish used to come to table with them,

*' And sat not as a meat, but as a g^est.*'

There is a poem of Marvel's on the death of King
Charles I. which I have not seen, but which I have heard
praised by one whose praise is never high but of the
highest things,* for the beauty and pathos, as well as
generous frankness of the sentiments, coming, as they did,
from a determined and incorruptible political foe.

Shadwell was a successful and voluminous dramatic
writer of much the same period. His ' Libertine ' (taken
from the celebrated Spanish story) is fall of spirit ; but
it is the spirit of licentiousness and impiety. At no time
do there appear to have been such extreme speculations
afloat on the subject of religion and morality, as there
were shortly after the Beformation, and afterwards under
the Stuarts, the differences being widened by political
irritation ; and the Puritans often over-acting one extreme
out of grimace and hypocrisy, as the king's party did the
other out of bravado.

Carew is excluded from his pretensions to the laureate*
ship in Suckling's ' Sessions of the Poets,' on account of hia
slowness. His verses are delicate and pleasing, with a
certain feebleness, but with very little tincture of the
affectation of this period. His masque (called CceHum
Britannicum) in celebration of a marriage at court, has
not much wit nor feuicy, but the accompanying prose
directions and commentary on the mythological story, are
written with wonderful facility and elegance, in a style
of fitmiliar dramatic dialogue approaching nearer the
writers of Queen Anne's reign than those of Queen
Elizabeth's.

♦ Probably, Charles Lamb is here meant. — ^Ed.

Cowley, Butler, &c, 71

Milton's name is included by Dr. Jolinson in tlie list of
metaphysical poets on no better authority than his lines
on ' Hobson the Cambridge Carrier,' which he acknowledges
were the only ones Milton wrote on this model. Indeed,
he is the great contrast to that style of poetry, being
remarkable for breadth and massiness, or what Dr. Johnson
calls "aggregation of ideas," beyond almost any other
poet. He has in this respect been compared to Michael
Angelo, but not with much reason : his verses are

' " inimitable on earth

By model, or by shading pencil drawn."

Suckling is also ranked, without sufficient warrant,
among the metaphysical poets. Sir John was of "the
court, courtly ;" and his style almost entirely free from
the charge of pedantry and affectation. There are a few
blemishes of this kind in his works, but they are but few.
His compositions are almost all of them short and liyely
effusions of wit and gallantry, written in a familiar but
spirited style, without much design or effort. His shrewd
and taunting address to a desponding lover will sufficiently
vouch for the truth of this account of the general cast of
his best pieces.

•' Why so pale and wan, fond lover?
Pr*ythee why so pale ?
Will, when looking well can't move her.
Looking ill prevail ?
Pr'ythee why so pale ?

•* Why 80 dull and mute, young sinner ?
Pr'ythee why so mute V
Will, when speaking well can't win her.
Saying nothing do't ?
Pr'ythee why so mute ?

** Quit, quit for shame, this will not mov9»
This cannot take her ;
If of herself she will not love.
Nothing can make her ;
The Devil take her."

72 The English Comic Writers.

The two short poems against ' Fruition,' that beginning,
" There never yet was woman made, nor shall, but to be
curst," — ^the song, " I pr'ythee, spare me, gentle boy, press
me no more for that slight toy, that foolish trifle of a
heart," — another, " 'Tis now, since I sat down before, that
foolish fort, a heart," — Imtea Alanson — ^the set of similes,
'^ Hast thou seen the down in the air, when wanton winds
have tost it," — and his 'Dream,' which is of a more
tender and romantic cast, are all exquisite in their way.
They are the origin of the style of Prior and Gay in their
short fugitive verses, and of the songs in the Beggar's
Opera. His Ballad on a Wedding is his masterpiece, and
is indeed unrivalled in that class of composition, for the
voluptuous delicacy of the sentiments, and the luxuriant
richness of the images. I wish I could repeat the whole,
but that, &om the change of manners, is impossible. The
description of the bride is (half of it) as follows : the
story is supposed to be told by one coimtryman to
another. *

^' Her finger was so small, the ring
Would not stay on, which they did bring ;

It was too wide a peck :
And to say truth (for out it must) >

It look'd like the great collar (just)

About our young colt*s neck.

M

Her feet beneath her petticoat.

Like little mice, stole in and out,

As if they fear'd the light :

But oh 1 she dances such a way !

No sun upon an Easter-day

Is half so fine a sight.!
*****

* Probably an error. See a note in Lovelace's 'Poems,* ed,
Hazlitt, xxxii., and * Notes and Queries,' fourth series, ii., 579. — En,

t An allusion, of course, to the myth, that the sun dances on
Easter-day, See *PopuUr Antiquities of Great Britain,' 1869, L
91-2.— Ed,

Onvhyy Butler, dec, 73

** Her cheeks so rare a white was on,
No daisy makes comparison,

(Who sees them is undone,,
For streaks of red were mingled there.
Such as are on a Cath'rine pear,

(The side that's next the sun.)

•* Her lips were red ; and one was thiu,
Compar'd to that was next her chin

(Some bee had stung it newly ;)
But (Dick) her eyes so guard her face,
I durst no more upon them gaze,

Than on the sun in July.

'' Her mouth so small, when she does speaJc,
Thoud'st swear her teeth her words did break,

That they might passage get ;
But she so handled still the matter.
They came as good as ours, or better,

And are not spent a whit."

There is to me in the whole of this delightful performance
a freshness and purity like the first breath of morning.
Its sportive irony never trespasses on modesty, though it
sometimes (laughing) threatens to do so ! Suckling's
' Letters ' are full of habitual gaiety and good sense. His
' Discourse on Eeason in Beligion ' is well enough meant.
Though he excelled in the conversational style of poetry,
writing verse with the freedom and readiness, vivacity and
unconcern, with which he would have talked on the most
fjEuniliar and sprightly topics, his peculiar powers deserted
him in attempting dramatic dialogue. His comedy of the
Gdblina is equally defective in plot, wit, and nature ; it is
a wretched list of exits and entrances, and the whole
business of the scene is taken up in the unaccountable
seizure, and equally unaccountable escapes, of a number
of persons from a band of robbers in the shape of goblins,
who turn out to be noblemen and gentlemen in disguise.*

* While writing this drama, the author appears to have had in
view a passage in the • Merry Wives of Windsor/ and one also in the
• Tempest.'— Ed.

74 The Eft/flish Comic Writers.

Suckling was not a Grub Street author ; or it might be
said, that this play is like what he might have written
after dreaming all night of duns and a sponging-house.
His tragedies are no better: their titles are the most
interesting part of them, * Aglaura,' * Brennoralt,' and the
' Sad One/

Cowley had more brilliancy of fancy and ingenuity of
thought than Donne, with less pathos and sentiment.
His mode of illustrating his ideas differs also &om
Donne's in this : that whereas Donne is contented to
analyse an image into its component elements, and resolva
it into its most abstracted species, Cowley frst does this
indeed, but does not stop till he has fixed upon some other
prominent example of the same general class of ideas, and
forced them into a metaphorical union, by the medium of
the generic definition. Thus he says —

" The Phcenix Pindar is a vast species alone."

He means to say that ho stands by himself : he is then
" a vast species alone :*' then by applying to this generality
the prindpium individtiationis, he becomes a Phoenix,
because the Phoenix is the only example of a species
contained in an individual. Yet this is only a literal or
metaphysical coincidence : and literally and metaphy-
sically speaking, Pindar was not a species by himself, but
only seemed so by pre-eminence or excellence ; that isj
from qualities of mind appealing to and absorbing the
imagination, and which, therefore, ought to be represented
in poetical language, by some other obvious and palpable
image exhibiting the same kind or degree of excellence in
other things, as when Gray compares him to the Theban

eagle,

** Sailing with supreme dominion
Tlirough the azure deep of air."

Again, he talks in the ' Motto, or Invocation to his Muse,
of " marching the Muse's Hannibal " into undiscovered

Cowley^ Butler^ &c. 75

regions. That is, he thinks, first of being a leader in
poetry, and then he immediately, by virtue of this abstrac-
tion, becomes a Hannibal; though no two things can
really be more unlike in all the associations belonging to
them, than a leader of armies and a leader of the tuneful
Nine. In like manner, he compares Bacon to Moses ; for
in his verses extremes are sure to meet. The ' Hymn to
Light,' which forms a perfect contrast to Milton's ' Invo-
cation to Light,' in the commencement of the third book of
' Paradise Lost,' begins in the following manner :-^

" First-bom of Chaos, who so fair didst come
From the old negro's darksome womb !
Which, when it saw the lovely child,
The melancholy mass put on kind looks, and smil'd.*

And soon after —

" 'Tis, I believe, this archery to show

That so much cost in colours thou,
And skill in painting, dost bestow.
Upon thy ancient arms, the gaudy heav'nly bow.

*• Swift as light thoughts their empty career run.
Thy itice is finish'd when begun ;
Let a post-angel start with thee,
And thou the goal of earth shalt reach as soon as he."

The conceits here are neither wit nor poetry ; but a bur-^
lesque upon both, made up of a singular metaphorical
jargon, verbal generalities, and physical analogies. Thus
his calling Chaos, or Darkness, " the old negro," would do
for abuse or jest, but is too remote and degrading for
serious poetry, and yet it is meant for such. The " old
negro " is at best a nickname, and the smile on its face
loses its beauty in such company. The making out . the
rainbow to be a species of heraldic painting, and convert-
ing an angel into a post-boy, show the same rage for com-
parison ; but such comparisons are as odious as they are

76 The English Comic Writers.

nnjasi Dr. Johnson has multiplied instances of the same
false style, in its yarious divisions and subdivisions.*
Of Cowley's serious poems, the ' Complaint ' is the one I
like the best ; and some of his translations in the Essays,
as those on 'Liberty and Betirement,' are exceedingly good.
The 'Odes to Vandyke,' to the 'Boyal Society,' to
' Hobbes,' and to the later ' Brutus,' b^inning '' Excellent
Brutus," are all fiill of ingenious and high thoughts,
impaired by a load of ornament and quaint disguises.
The ' Chronicle, or list of his Mistresses,' is the best of his
original lighter pieces : but the best of his poems are the
translations from Anacreon, which remain, and are likely
to remain unrivalled. The spirit of wine and joy cir-
culates in them; and though they are lengthened out
beyond the originals, it is by fresh impulses of an eager
and inexhaustible feeling of delight. Here are some of
4hem: —

Dbdtkino.

« The thirsty earth soaks up the rain,
And drinks, and gapes for drink again.
The phints suck in the earth, and are
With constant drinking firesh and fair.
The sea itself, ^hich one would think
Should have but little need of drink.
Drinks twice ten thousand rivers up.
So fill'd that they overflow the cup.
The busy sun (and one would guess
By 's drunken fiery &ce no less)
Drinks up the sea, and, when he 's done,
The moon and stars drink up the sun.
They drink and dance by their own lights
They drink and revel all the night.
Nothing in nature 's sober found,
But an eternal health goes round.
FiU up the bowl then, fill it high,
FiU all the glasses there ; for why
Should every creature drink but I ;
Why, man of morals, tell me why ?"

See his « lives of the British Poets,* Vol. L

Cowley i Butler, (&c. 77

This is a classical intoxication ; and the poet's imagination,
giddy with fancied joys, communicates its spirit and its
motion to inanimate things, and makes all nature reel
round with it. It is not easy to decide between these
choice pieces, which may be reckoned among the delights'
of human kind;' but that to the Grasshopper is one of the
happiest as well as most serious : —

" Happy insect, what can be
In happiness compared to thee ?
Fed -with nourishment divine.
The dewy morning's gentle wine I
Nature waits upon thee still, ^

And thy verdant cup does fill ;
'Tis fiU'd wherever thou dost tread,
Nature's self thy Ganymede.
Thou dost drink, and dance, and sing ;
Happier than the happiest king I ^

All the fields which thou dost see.
All the plants, belong to thee ;
All that summer-hours produce,
Fertile made with early juice.
Man for thee does sow and plough,
Farmer he, and landlord thou !
Thou dost innocently joy ;
Nor does thy luxury destroy ;
The shepherd gladly heareth thee.
More harmonious than he.
Thee country hinds with gladness hear.
Prophet of the ripen'd year ;
Thee Phoebus loves, and does inspire ;
Phoebus is himself thy sire.
To thee, of all things upon earth,
Life is no longer than thy mirth.
Happy insect, happy thou !
Dost neither age nor winter know ;
But, when thou'st drunk, and danc'd, and sung
Thy fill, the flowery leaves among,
(Voluptuous and wise withal.
Epicurean animal !)
Sated with thy summer feast,
Thou retir'st to endless rest."

78 The English Comic Writers.

Cowley's Essays* are among the most agreeable prose-
compositions in our language, being equally recommended
by sense, wit, learning, and interesting personal history,
and written in a style quite free from the faults of Ms
poetry. It is a pity that he did not cultivate his talent
for prose more, and write less in verse, foe he was clearly
a man of more reflection than imagination. The Essays on
* Agriculture,' on * Liberty,' on ' Solitude,' and on ' Greatness,'
are all of them delightful. From the last I may give
his account of Senecio as an addition to the instances of
the ludicrous, which I have attempted to enumerate in the
introductory Lecture; whose ridiculous affectation of
grandeur ISenoca the elder (he tells us) describes to this
effect : '* Senecio was a man of a turbid and confused wit,
who could not endure to speak any but mighty words and
sentences, till this humour grew at last into so notorious a
habit, or rather disease, as became the sport of the whole
town : he would have no servants, but huge, massy fellows;
no plate or household-stuff, but thrice as big as the fEtshion :
you may believe me, for I speak it without raillery, his
extravagancy came at last into such a madness, that he
would not put on a pair of shoes, each of which was not
big enough for both his feet : he would eat nothing but
what was great, nor touch any fruit but horse-plums and
pound-pears : he kept a mistress that was a very giantess,
and made her walk too always in chiopins, till, at last, he
got tiie surname of Senecio Grandio." This was certainly
the most absurd person we read of in antiquity. Cowley's
character of Oliver Cromwell, which is intended as a
satire (though it certainly produces a very different im-
pression on the mind), may vie for truth of outline and
force of colouring with the masterpieces of the Greek and
Latin historians. It may serve as a contrast to the last
extract. " What can be more extraordinary than that a

* A separate edition of these was published by Mr. Pickering in
1826, 8vo.— Ed. -

Cou/leyy Butler, &c. 79

person of mean birth, no fortune, no eminent qualities of
body, which haye sometimes, or of mind, which haye often,
raised men to the highest dignities, should haye the
courage to attempt, and the happiness to succeed in, so
improbable a design, as the destruction of one of the most
ancient and most solidly-foimded monarchies upon the
earth ? That he should haye the power or boldness to put
his prince and master to an open and infamous death ; to
banish that numerous and strongly-allied family ; to do
all this imder the name and wages of a Parliament ; to
trample upon them too as he pleased, and spurn them out
of doors when he grew weary of them ; to raise up a new
and unheard-of monster out of their ashes ; to stifle that
in the yery infancy, and set up himself aboye all things
that eyer were called soyereign in England ; to oppress all
his enemies by arms, and all his friends afterwards by
artifice ; to serye all parties patiently for a while, and to
command them yictoriously at last; to oyer-run each
corner of the three nations, and oyercome with equal
facility both the riches of the south and the poyerty of the
north ; to be feared and courted by all foreign princes,
and adopted a brother to the gods of the earth ; to call
together Parliaments with a word ef his pen, and scatter
them again with the breath of his mouth ; to be humbly
and daily petitioned that he would please to be hired, at
the rate of two millions a year, to be the master of those
who had hired him before to be their seryant ; to haye
the estates and liyes of three kingdoms as much at his
disposal as was the little inheritance of his father,
and to be as noble and liberal in the spending of
them; and lastly (for there is no end of all the par-
ticulars of his glory), to bequeath all this with one word
to his posterity ; to die with peace at home, and triumph
abroad ; to be buried among kings, and with more than
regal solemnity; and to leaye a name behind him, not
to be extinguished, but with the whole world; which

80 The English Comic Writers.

as it is now too little for his praises, so miglit have
been too for his conquests, if the short line of his human
life could have been stretched out to the extent of his
immortal designs !''

Cowley has left one comedy, called [the] ' Cutter of Cole-
man Street,'* which met with an unfavourable reception at
the time, and is now (not undeservedly) forgotten. It
contains, however, one good scene, which is rich both in
fancy and humour, that between the puritanical bride,
Tabitha, and her ranting royalist husband. It is said that
this play was originally composed, and afterwards revived,
as a satire upon the Presbyterian party; yet it was
resented by the court party as a satire upon itself. A
man must, indeed, be sufficiently blind with party preju-
dice, to have considered this as a compliment to his own
side of the question. " Call you this backing of your
friends?" The cavaliers are in this piece represented as
reduced to the lowest shifts in point of fortune, and sunk
still lower in point of principle.

The greatest single production of wit of this period, I
might say of this country, is Butler's ' Hudibras.' It con-
tains specimens of every variety of drollery and satire, and
those specimens crowded together into almost every page.
The proof of this is, that nearly one-half of his lines are
got by heart, and quoted for mottoes. In giving instances
of different sorts of wit, or trying to recollect good things
of this kind, they are the first which stand ready in the
memory; and they are those which furnish the best
tests and most striking illustrations of what we want.
Dr. Campbell, in his 'Philosophy of Ehetoric,' when
treating of the subject of wit, which he has done very
neatly and sensibly, has constant recourse to two authors,
Pope and Butler, the one for ornament, the other more for

* This was originally prodnced and printed in Cromweirs time
(1C50) under the title of *The Guardian;' on its revival at the
BestoiBtion, the name was changed, and the piece itself altered. — ^Eix

Cowley^ Butler^ dto, 81

use. Butler is equally in the hands of the learned and

the yulgar; for the sense is generally as solid as the

images are amusing and grotesque. Whigs and Tories

|oin in his praise. He could not, in spite of himself,

*• narrow his mind.

And to party give np what was meant for mankind."

Though his suhject was local and temporary, his fiEtme

was not circumscribed within his own age. He was

admired by Charles II. and has been rewarded by posterity.

It is the poet's fate ! It is not, perhaps, to be wondered

at, that arbitrary and worthless monarchs like Charles II.

should neglect those who pay court to them. The idol

(if it had sense) would despise its worshippers. Indeed,

Butler hardly merited anything on the score of loyalty

to the house of Stuart. True wit is not a parasite plant

The strokes which it aims at folly and knavery on one

side of a question, tell equally home on the other. Dr.

Zachary Grey, who added notes to the poem,* and abused

the leaders of Cromwell's party by name, would be more

likely to have gained a pension for his services than

Butler, who was above such petty work. A poem like

'Hudibras ' could not be made to order of a court, Charles

might very well have reproached the author with wanting

to show Ids own wit and sense rather than to favour a

tottering cause ; and he has even been suspected, in parts

of his poem, of glancing at majesty itself. He in general

ridicules not persons, but things, not a party, but their

principles, which may belong, as time and occasion serve,

to one set of solemn pretenders or another. This he has

done most effectually, in every possible way, and from

every possible source, learned or unlearned. He has

exhausted the moods and figures of satire and sophistry .f

* In 1744, 2 vols., Svo. But a good edition of Butler is still a
desideratum. — Ed.

t " And have not two saints power to use
A greater privilege than three Jews ?"

♦♦♦**♦ [«Her

a

82 The English Comic Writers.

It would be possible to dednee the different forms of
syllogism in Aristotle, from the different violations or
mock imitations of them in Butler. He fulfils every one
of Barrow's conditions of wit, which I have enumerated in
the first Lecture. He makes you laugh or smile by com-
paring the high to the low,* or by pretending to raise the
low to the lofty,f he succeeds equally in the familiarity
of his illustrations,^: or their incredible extravagance,§ by
comparing things that are alike or not alike. He surprises
equally by his coincidences or contradiction^, by spinning
out a long-winded flimsy excuse, or by turning short upon

" Her voice, the music of the spheres,
So loud it deafens mortals' ears,
As wise philosophers have thought,
* And that's the cause we hear it not"

* ** No Indian prince has to his palace

More followers than a thief to the gallows.*^
t *< And in his nose, like Indian king.

He (Bruin) wore for ornament a ring."
J, ** Whose noise whets valour sharp, like heer

By thunder turned to vinegar."
§ '* Beplete with strange hermetic powder,

That wounds nine miles point-blank would soldez.

*' His tawny beard was th' equal grace

Both of his wisdom and his £eu% ;

In cut and die so like a tile,

A sudden view it wotdd beguile :

The upper part thereof was whey,

The nether orange mixed with grey.

This hairy meteor did denounce

The fall of sceptres and of crowns ;

With grisly type did represent

Declining age of government ;

And tell with hieroglyphic spade

Its own grave and the state's were made,
« * * * * *

*< This sword a dagger had his page,
That was but little for his age;
And therefore waited on him so.
As dwarfs upon knight-errants do."

Cowley, Butler, &c. 83

you with the point-blank truth. His rhymes are as witty
as his reasons, equally remote from what common custom
would suggest;* and he startles you sometimes by an
empty sound like a blow upon a drum-head,')' by a pun
upon one word 4 and by splitting another in two at the
end of a verse, with the same alertness and power over the
odd and unaccountable in the combinations of sounds as of
images.§

There are as many shrewd aphorisms in his works,
clenched by as many quaint and individual allusions, as
perhaps in any author whatever. He makes none but
palpable hits, that may be said to give one's understanding
a rap on the knuckles. || He is, indeed, sometimes too
prolific, and spins his antithetical sentences out, one after
another, till the reader, not the author, is wearied. He is,
however, very seldom guilty of repetitions o r wordy par a-
phrases of himself; but he sometimes comes rather too
neaFir; and interrupts the thread of his argument (for
narrative he has none) by a tissue of epigrams, and the
tagging of points and conundrums without end. The
fault, or original sin of his genius, is, that from too much
leaven it ferments and runs over; and there is, imfor-
tunately, nothing in his subject to restrain and keep it

* " And straight another with his flambeau,
Gave Balpho o'er the eyes a damn'd blow.

'* That deals in destiny's dark counsels,
And sage opinions of the moon sells."

t ** The mighty Tottipottimoy
Sent to our elders an envoy."

X " For Hebrew rooU^ although they're found
To flourish most in barren ground."

§ " Those wholesale critics that in coffee-
Houses cry down all philosophy."

II *• This we among ourselves may speak.
But to the wicked or the weak
We must be cautious to declare
Perfection-truths, such as these are."

o 2

>''

84 The English Comic Writers.

within compass. He has no stoiy good for anything;
and his characters are good for very little. They are too
low and mechanical, or too much one thing, personifica-
tions, as it were, of nicknames, and bugbears of popular
prejudice and vulgar cant, unredeemed by any virtue, or
difference or variety of disposition. There is no relaxa-
tion or shifting of the parts ; and the impression in some
degree fails of its effect, and becomes questionable from
its being always the same. The satire looks, at length,
almost like special-pleading: it has nothing to confirm
it in the apparent good humour or impartiality of the
writer. It is something revolting to see an author per-
secute his characters, the cherished offspring of his brain,
in this manner, without mercy. * Hudibras ' and ' Ealpho '
have immortalized Butler ; and what has he done for them
in return, but set them up to be " pilloried on infamy's
high and lasting stage ?" This is imgrateful !

The rest of the characters have, in general, little more
than their names and professions to distinguish them. We
scarcely know one from another, Cerdon, or Orsin, or
Crowdero, and are often obliged to turn back, to connect
their several adventures together. In fact Butler ^ives
only at a set of obnoxious opinions, and runs into general
declamations. His poem in its essence is a satire, or
didactic poem. It is not virtually dramatic, or narrative.
It is composed of digressions by the author. He instantly
breaks off in the middle of a story, or incident, to com-
ment upon or turn it into ridicule. He does not give
characters but topics, which would do just as well in his
own mouth without agents, or machinery of any kind.
The long digression in Part III. in which no mention is
made of the hero, is just as good and as much an integrant
part of the poem as the rest. The conclusion is lame and
impotent, but that is sayLog nothing ; the beginning and
middle are equally so as to historical merit. There is no
keeping in his characters, as in ' Don Quixote ;' nor any

Cowley, Butler, &c, 85

enjoyment of the ludicrousness of their situations, as in
Hogarth. Indeed, it requires a considerable degree of
sympathy to enter into and describe to the life even the
ludicrous eccentricities of others, and there is no appear-
ance of sympathy or liking to his subject in Butler. His
humour is to his wit, " as one grain of. wheat in a bushel
of chaff : you shall search all day, and when you find it,
it is not worth the trouble." Yet there are exceptions.
The most decisive is, I think, the description of the battle
between Bruin and his foes, Part I. Canto iii., and again
of the triumphal procession in Part II. Canto ii., of which
the principal features are copied in Hogarth's election
print, the Chairing of the Successful Candidate. The
account of Sidrophel and Whackum is another instance,
and there are some few others, but rarely sprinkled up and
down.*

* The following are nearly all I can remember. —
" Thus stopp'd their fury and the basting
Which towards Hudibras was hasting."
It is said of the bear, in the fight with the dogs —
*' And setting his right foot before,
He raised himself to show how tall
His person was above them all.

** At this the knight grew high in chafe.
And staring furiously on Balph,
He trembled and look'd pale with ire,
Like ashes first, then red as fire.

" The knight himself did after ride,
Leading Crowdero by his side,
And toVd him if he lagged behind.
Like boat against the tide and wind.

" And rais'd upon his desperate foot,
On stirrup-side he gazed about.

'* And Hudibras, who used to ponder
On such sights with judicious wonder."
* * * ♦ » ♦ ** [The

86 Tlie English Comic Writers.

Tho widow, the termagant heroine of the poem, is still
more disagreeable than her lover; and her sarcastic
account of the passion of love, as consisting entirely in an
attachment to land and houses, goods and chattels, which
is enforced with all the rhetoric the author is master of,
and hunted down through endless similes, is evidently
false. The vulgarity and meanness of sentiment which
Butler complains of in the Presbyterians, seems at last
from long familiarity and close contemplation to have
tainted his own mind. Their worst vices appear to have
taken root in his imagination. Nothing but what was
selfish and groveUing sunk into his memory, in the depres-
sion of a menial situation under his supposed hero. He has,
indeed, carried his private grudge too far into his general
speculations. He even makes out the rebels to be cowards
and well-beaten, which does not accord with the history
of the timeSi In an excess of zeal for church and state,
he is too much disposed to treat religion as a cheat, and
liberty as a farce. It was the cant of that day (from
which he is not free) to cry down sanctity and sobriety as
marks of disaffection, as it is the cant of this, to hold them
up as proofs of loyalty and staunch monarchical prin-

The beginning of the account of the procession in Part 11. is as
follows : —

'* Both thonght it was the wisest conrse
To waive the fight and mount to horse.
And to secure by swift retreating.
Themselves from danger of worse beating :
Yet neither of them would disparage
By uttering of his mind his courage.
Which made 'em stoutly keep their ground.
With horror and disdain wind-hound.
And now the cause of all their fear
By slow degrees approach'd so near.
They might distinguish different noise
Of horns and pans, and dogs and boys.
And kettle-drums, whose sullen dub
Sounds like the hooping of a tub."

Cowley, Butler y &e. 87

ciplos.* Beligion and morality are, in either case, equally
made subservient to the spirit of party, and a stalking,
borse to the love of power. Finally, there is a want of
pathos and humour, but no want of interest in ' Hudibras.'
It is difficult to lay it down. One thought is inserted
into another ; the links in the chain of reasoning are so
closely riveted, that the attention seldom flags, but is
kept alive (without any other assistance) by the mere
force of writing. There are occasional 'indications of
poetical fancy, and an eye for natural beauty ; but these
are kept under or soon discarded, judiciously enough, but
it should seem, not for lack of power, for they are certainly
as masterly as they are rare. Such are the burlesque
description of the stocks, or allegorical prison, in which
first Crowdero, and then Hudibras, is confined: the
passage beginning —

*' As when an owl that's in a bam.
Sees a mouse creeping in the com.
Sits still and shnts his round blue eyes,
As if he slept/' &c.

And the description of the moon going down in the early
morning, which is as pure, original, and picturesque as

e: —

'* The queen of night, whose large command
Bules all the sea and half the land.
And over moist and crazy brains
In high spring-tides at midnight reigns,
Was now declining to the west,
To go to bed and take her rest."

Butler is sometimes sdiolastic, but he makes his learn-
ing tell to good account; and for the purposes of bur-
lesque, nothing can be better fitted than the scholastic
style.

Butler's ' Bemains ' are nearly as good and fiill of sterling

* This was written in 1818, yet it is scarcely an obsolete observar
tion (1869).--Ed. /

88 • OChe English Comic Writers,

genius as bis principal poem. Take the following ridicule
of the plan of the Greek tragedies as an instance.*

— "^ Beduce all tragedy, by rales of art,

Back to its ancient theatre, a cart,

And make them henceforth keep the beaten roads

Of reverend choruses and episodes ;

Reform and regulate a puppet-play,

According to the true and ancient way ;

That not an actor shall presume to squeak,

Unless he have a license for't in Greek :

Nor devil in the puppet-play be allowed

To roar and spit fire, but to fright the crowd,

Unless some god or demon chance to have piques

Against an ancient family of Greeks ;

That other men may tremble and take warning.

How such a fotal progeny they're born in ;

For none but such for tragedy are fitted,

That have been ruined only to be pitied :

And only those held proper to deter,

Who have th' ill luck against their wills to err ;

Whence only such as are of middling sizes, ^

Betwixt moraUty and venial vices.

Are qualified to be destroyed by &te.

For other mortals to take warning at."

Upon Critics.

His ridicule of Milton's Latin style is equally severe, but
not so well founded.

I have only to add a few words respecting the dramatic
writers about this time, before we arrive at the golden
period of our comedy. Those of Etherege f are good for
nothing, except *The Man of Mode, or Sir Fopling
Flutter,' which is, I think, a more exquisite and airy
picture of the manners of that age than any other extant.
Sir Fopling himself is an inimitable coxcomb, but plea-
sant withal. He is a suit of clothes personified. Dori-
mant (supposed to be Lord Bochester) is the genius of
grace, gallantry, and gaiety. The women in this courtly

* Davenant, in his * First Day's Entertainment at Butland House,'
1657, had seemed to approve of the ancient dramatic models. — Ed.
t * Love in a Tub/ and * She Would if She Could.'

•/

».

Cowley^ Butler, &e, 89

play have very much tlie look and air (but sometliing
more demure and significant) of Sir Peter Lel/s beauties.
Harriet, the mistress of Dorimant, who " tames his wild
heart to her loving hand," is the flower of the piece. Her
natural, untutored grace and spirit, her meeting with
Dorimant in the park, bowing and mimicking him, and
the luxuriant description which is given of her fine person,
altogether form one of the cTief-d'ceuvres of dramatic paint-
ing. I should think this comedy would bear reviving;
and if Mr. Listen were to play Sir Fopling, the part
would shine out with double lustre, '' like the mom risen
on mid-noon." * Dryden's comedies have all the point that
there is in ribaldry, and all the humour that there is in
extravagance. I am sorry I can say nothing better of
them. He was not at home in this kind of writing, of
which he was himseK conscious. His play was horse-play.
His wit (what there is of it) is ingenious and scholar-like,
rather than natural and dramatic. Thus Burr, in the
' Wild Gallant,' says to Failer, " She shall sooner cut an
atom than part us." — His plots are pure voluntariea in
absurdity, that bend and shift to his purpose without any
previous notice or reason, and are governed by final
causes. ' Sir Martin Mar-all,' which was taken from the
Duchess of Newcastle, is the best of his plays, and the
origin of the ' Busy Body.' Otway's comedies do no sort
of credit to him; on the contrary, they. are as desperate
as his fortunes. The Duke of Buckingham's famous
'Behearsal,' which has made, and deservedly, so much
noise in the world, is in a great measure taken from
Beaumont and Fletcher's ' Knight of the Burning Pestle,^
which was written in ridicule of the London apprentices,
in the reign of Elizabeth, who had a great hand in the
critical decisions of that age.f There were other dramatio

* This was written in 1818.— Ed.

t This drama was sapposed by the late Mr. Dyce to have been
written about 1610.— Ed.

50 27^6 English Comic Writers.

-writers of tliis period, noble and plebeian. I shall only
mention one other piece, the ' Committee,' I believe by
Sir Eobert Howard,* which has of late been cut down into
the farce called ' Honest Thieves,' and which I remember
reading with a great deal of pleasure many years ago.

One cause of the difference between the immediate
reception and lasting success of dramatic works at this
period may be, that after the court took the playhouses
under its particular protection, everything became very
much an affair of private 4)atronage. If an author could
get a learned lord or a countess-dowager to bespeak a box
et his play, and applaud the doubtful passives, he con-
sidered his business as done. On the other hand, there
was a reciprocity between men of letters and their patrons ;
critics were '* mitigated into courtiers, and submitted," as
Mr. Burke has it, '' to the soft collar of social esteem," in
pronouncing sentence on the works of lords and ladies.
How ridiculous this seems now ! What a hubbub it would
create, if it were known that a particular person of feushion
and title had taken a front box in order to decide on the
fate of a first play! How the newspaper critics would
laugh in their sleeves! How the public would sneer!
But at this time there was no public. I will not say,
therefore, that these times are better than those ; but they
are better, I think, in this respect. An author now-ardays
no longer hangs dangling on the frown of a lord, or the
smile of a lady of quality (the one governed perhaps by
his valet, and the other by her waiting-maid), but throws
himself boldly, making a lover's leap of it, into the broad
lap of public opinion, on- which he falls like a feather bed ;
and which, like the great bed of Ware, is wide enough to
hold us all very comfortably !

* Pepys saw it performed June 12th, 1663: it was printed in
tfolio, 1665.— Ed.

( 91 )

LECTURE IV.

ON ^VYCHEBL£T, COXGREYE, VANBBXJGH, AND FABQT7HAB.

Comedy is a " graceful ornament to tlie civil order ; the
Corinthian capital of polished SQpiety." Like the mirrors
which have been added to the sides of one of our theatres,*
it reflects the images of grace, of gaiety, and pleasure
double, and completes the perspective of human life. To
read a good comedy is to keep the best company in the
world, where the best things are said, and the most
amusing happen. The wittiest remarks are always ready
on the tongue, and the luckiest occasions are always at
hand to give birth to the happiest conceptions. Sense
makes strange havoc of nonsense. Befinement acts as a
foil to affectation, and affectation to ignorance. Sentence
after sentence tells. We don't know which to admire
most, the observation or the answer to it. We would
give our fingers to be able to talk so ourselves, or to hear
others talk so. In turning over the pages of the best
comedies, we are almost transported to another world, and
escape from this dull age to one that was all life, and
whim, and mirth, and humour. The curtain rises, and a
gayer scene presents itself, as on the canvas of Watteau.
We are admitted behind the scenes like spectators at
court, on a levee or birthday ; but it is the court, the gala
day of wit and pleasure, of gallantry and Charles II!
What an air breathes from the name ! what a rustling of
silks and waving of plumes I what a sparkling of diamond
earrings and shoe-buckles I What bright eyes (Ah, those

* Covent Garden, where the writer was accustomed to occupy
what was known as the Looking-glass Box. — ^£d.

92 The English Comic Writers,

were Waller's Sacharissa's * as she passed.) I what kiUing
looks and graceful motions ! How the faces of the whole
ring are dressed in smiles ! how the repartee goes round !
how wit and folly, elegance and awkward imitation of it,
set one another off! Happy, thoughtless age, when kings
and nobles led purely ornamental lives ; when the utmost
stretch of a morning's study went no farther than the
choice of a sword-knot, or the adjustment of a side-curl ;
when the soul spoke out in all the pleasing eloquence of
dress ; and beaux and belles, enamoured of themselves in
one another's follies, fluttered like gilded butterflies, in
giddy mazes, through the walks of St. James's Park !

The four principal writers of this style of comedy
(which I think the best) are undoubtedly Wycherley,
Congreve, Vanbrugh, and Farquhar. The dawn was in
Etherege, as its latest close was in Sheridan. — ^It is hard
to say which of these four is best, or in what each of them
excels, they had so many and such great excellences.

Congreve is the most distinct from the others, and the
most easily defined, both from what he possessed and
from what he wanted. He had by far the most wit and
elegance, with less of other things, of humour, character,
incident, &c. His style is inimitable, nay perfect. It is
^ the highest model of comic dialogue. Every sentence is
replete with sense and satire, conveyed in the most
polished and pointed terms. Every page presents a
shower of brilliant conceits, is a tissue of epigrams in
prose, is a new triumph of wit, a new conquest over dul-
ness. The Are of artful raillery is nowhere else so well
kept up. This style, which he was almost the flrst to
introduce, and which he carried to the utmost pitch of
classical refinement, reminds one exactly of Collins's de-
scription of wit as opposed to humour,

*' Whose jewels in his crisped hair
Are placed each other's light to share."

♦ The Lady Dorothy Sydney.—En.

Wycherley, Gongreve, dtc, 93

»

Sheridan will not bear a comparison with him in the
regular antithetical construction of his sentences, and in
the mechanical artifices of his style, though so much later,
and though style in general has been so much studied,
and in the mechanical part so much improved since then.
It bears every mark of being what he himself in the dedi-
cation of one of his plays tells us that it was, a spirited
copy taken off and carefully revised from the most select
society of his time, exhibiting all the sprightliness, ease,
and animation of familiar conversation, with the correct-
ness and delicacy of the most finished composition. His
works are a singular treat to those who have cultivated a
taste for the niceties of English style : there is a peculiar
flavour in the very words, which is to be found in hardly
any other writer. To the mere reader his writings would
be an irreparable loss: to the stage they are already
become a dead letter, with the exception of one of them,
'Love for LoVe.' This play is as full of character,
incident, and stage-effect, as almost any of those of his
contemporaries, and fuller of wit than any of his own,
except perhaps the ' Way of the World.' It still acts, and
is still acted well. The effect of it is prodigious on the
well-informed spectator. In particular, Munden's * Fore-
sight,' if it is not just the thing, is a wonderfully rich and
powerful piece of comic acting. His look is planet-
struck ; his dress and appearance like one of the signs of
the Zodiac taken down. Nothing can be more bewildered ;
and it only wants a little more helplessness, a little more
of the doating querulous garrulity of age, to be all that
one conceives of the superannuated, star-gazing original.
The gay, unconcerned opening of this play, and the
romantic generosity of the conclusion, where Valentine,
when about to resign his mistress, declares — "I never
valued fortune, but as it was subservient to my pleasure ;
and my only pleasure was to please this lady," — are alike
admirable. The peremptory bluntness and exaggerated

r

94 The English Comic Writers.

descriptions of Sir Sampson Legend are in a vein truly
oriental, with a Shakspearian cast of language, and form a
striking contrast to the quaint credulity and senseless
superstitions of Foresight. The remonstrance of his son
to him ^ « to divest him, along with his inheritance, of his
reason, thoughts, passions, inclinations, affections, appe-
tites, senses, and* the huge train of attendants which he
brought into the world with him/* with his valet's accom-
panying comments, is one of the most eloquent and spirited
specimens of wit, pathos, and morality, that is to be found.
The short scene with Trapland, the money-broker, is of
the first water. What a picture is here drawn of Tattle !
" More misfortunes, Sir I" says Jeremy. " FoZewfeW.
What, another dun? ^^ Jeremy, No, Sir, but Mr. Tattle
is come to wait upon you." What an introduction to
give of an honest gentleman in the shape of a misfortime !
The scenes between him. Miss Prue, and Ben, are of a
highly coloured description. Mrs. Frail and Mrs. Fore-
sight are ** sisters every way;" and the bodkin which
Mrs. Foresight brings as a proof of her sister's levity of
conduct, and which is so convincingly turned against her
as a demonstration of her own — " Nay, if you come to
that, where did you find that bodkin ?"-^is one of the
trophies of the moral justice of the comic drama. The
*f * Old Bachelor ' and * Double Dealer ' are inferior to * Love
for Love,' but one is never tired of reading them. The
fault of the last is, that Lady Touchwood approaches, in
the turbulent impetuosity of her character, and measured
tone of her declamation, too near to the tragedy -queen ;
and that Maskwell's plots puzzle the brain by their
intricacy, as they stagger our belief by their gratuitous
villany. Sir Paul and Lady Pliant, and my Lord and
Lady Froth, are also scarcely credible in the extravagant
insipidity and romantic vein of their follies, in which they
are notably seconded by the lively Mr. Brisk and " dying
Ned Careless."

Wycherley, Oongreve, &c. 95

ThQ,i-Way- of tb » -World ' was the author's last and
most carefully fmished performance. It is an essence
almost too fine ; and the sense of pleasure evaporates in
an aspiration after something that seems too exquisite ever
to have been realised. After inhaling the spirit of Con-
greve's wit, and tasting " love's thrice reputed nectar " in
his works, the head grows giddy in turning from the
highest point of rapture to the ordinary business of life ;
and we can with di£&culty recall the truant fancy to
those objects which we are fain to take up with here, /or
better, for worse. What can be more enchanting than
Millamant and her morning thoughts, her doux sommeils f
What more provoking than her reproach to her lover, who
proposes to rise early, " Ah I idle creature !" The meet-
ing of these two lovers after the abrupt dismissal of Sir
Wilful, is the height of careless and voluptuous elegance,
as if they moved in air, and drank a finer spirit of
humanity.

*^ Millamant. Like Phoebus sung the no less amorous boy.
Mirabell. Like Daphne she, as lovely and as coy/'

Millamant is the perfect model of the accomplished fine'
lady:

'* Come, then, the colours and the ground prepare,
Dip in the rainbow, trick her off in air ;
Choose a firm cloud, before it falls, and in it
Catch, ere she change, the Cynthia of a minute/'

She is the ideal heroine of the comedy of high life, wha
arrives at the height of indifference to everything from
the height of satisfaction ; to whom pleasure is as familiar
as the air she draws ; elegance worn as a part of her dress ;
wit the habitual language which she hears and speaks ;
love, a matter of course ; and who has nothing to hope or to
fear, her own caprice being the only law to herself and rulo
to those about her. Her words seem composed of amorou.

96 The English Comic Writers,

sigliB; her looks are glanced at prostrate admirers or

envious rivals.

•' If there's delight ia love, 'tis when I see
That heart that others hleed for, bleed for me."

She refines on her pleasures to satiety; and is almost
stifled in the incense that is offered to her person, her
wit, her beauty, and her fortune. Secure of triumph, her
slaves tremble at her frown : her charms are so irresistible,
that her conquests give her neither surprise nor concern.
"Beauty the lover's gift?" she exclaims, in answer to
\ MirabeU — " Dear me, what is a lover that it can give ?
Why one makes lovers as iSeust as one pleased^ and they
live as long as one pleases, and they die as soon as one
pleases ; and then if one pleases, one makes more." We
are not sorry to see her tamed down at last, from her pride
of love and beauty, into a wife. She is good-natured and
generous, with all her temptations to the contrary; and
her behaviour to Mirabell reconciles us to her treatment
of Witwoud and Petulant, and of her country admirer.
Sir Wilful.

Congreve has described all this in his character of
Millamant, but he has done no more ; and if he had, he
would have done wrong. He has given us the finest idea
of an artificial character of this kind ; but it is still the
reflection of an artificial character. The springs of
nature, passion, or imagination are but feebly touched.
The impressions appealed to, and with masterly address,
are habitual, external, and conventional advantages ; the
ideas of birth, of fortune, of connexions, of dress, accom-
plishment, fashion, the opinion of the world, of crowds of
admirers, continually come into play, flatter our vanity,
bribe our interest, soothe our indolence, fall in with our
prejudices ; — it is these that support the goddess of our
idolatry, with which she is everything, and without which
fihe would be nothing. The mere fine lady of comedy,
compared with the heroine of romance or poetry, when

i

Wycherley, Conffrevej dte, 97

fitripped of her adyentitious ornaments and advantages, is
too much like the doll stripped of its finery. In thinking .
of Millamant, we think almost as much of her dress as of
her person : it is not so with respect to Rosalind or
Perdita. The poet has painted them differently ; in
colours which " nature's own sweet and cunning hand .
laid on," with health, with innocence, with gaiety, " wild
wit, invention ever neW;" with pure red and white, like ,
the wilding's blossoms; with warbled wood-notes, like
the feathered choir's; with thoughts fluttering on the
wings of imagination, and hearts panting and breathless
with eager delight. The interest we feel is in themselves ;
the admiration they excite is for themselves. They do
not depend upon the drapery of circumstances. It is
nature that "blazons herself " in them. Imogen is the
same in a lonely cave as in a court ; nay more, for she
there seems something heavenly — a spirit or a vision ; and,
fks it were, shames her destiny, brighter for the foil of
circumstances. Millamant is nothing but a fine lady;
and all her airs and affectation would be blown away with
the first breath of misfortune. Enviable in drawing*
rooms, adorable at her toilette, fashion, like a witch, has ;
thrown its spell around her; but if that spell were
broken, her power of fiascination would be gone. For
that reason I think the character better adapted ibr the
stage : it is more artificial, more theatrical, more mere-
tnCtous. !• would rather have seen Mrs. Abington's
Millamant, than any Eosalind that ever appeared on the
stage. Somehow, this sort of acquired elegance is more a
thing of costume, of air and manner ; and in comedy, or
on the comic stage, the light and familiar, the trifling,
superficial and agreeable, bears, perhaps, rightful sway
over that which touches the affections, or exhausts the
fancy. There is a callousness in the worst characters in
the 'Way of the World,' in Fainall, and his wife and
Mrs. Marwood, not very pleasant ; and a grossness in the

\.

98 The English Comic Wriie^'s.

absurd ones, such as Jjady Wishfort and Sir Wilful, which
is not a little amusing. Witwoud wishes to disclaim, as
far as he can, his relationship to this last character, and
says, " he's but his half brother ;" to which Mirabell makes
answer — " Then, perhaps, he's but half a fool." Peg is
an admirable caricature of rustic awkwardness and sim-
plicity, which is carried to excess without any offence,
from a sense of contrast to the refinement of the chief
characters in the play. The description of Lady Wish-
fort's face is a perfect piece of painting. The force of
style in this author at times amounts to poetry. Waitwell,
who personates Sir Bowland, and Foible, his accomplice
in the matrimonial scheme upon her mistress, hang as a
dead weight upon the plot. They are mere tools in the
hands of Mirabell, and want life and interest. Congreve's
characters can all of them speak well, they are mere
machines when they come to act. Our author's superiority
deserted him almost entirely with his wit. His serious
and tragic poetry is frigid and jejune to an unaccountable
degree. His forte was the description of actual manners,
whether elegant or absurd ; and when he could not deride
the one or embellish the other, his attempts at romantic
passion or imaginary enthusiasm are forced, abortive, and
ridiculous, or commonplace. The description of the ruins
of a temple in the beginning of the ' Mourning Bride/
was a great stretch of his poetic genius. It has, however,
been over-rated, particularly by Dr. Johnson, who could
have done nearly as well himself for a single passage in
the same style of moralising and sentimental description.
To justify this general censure, and to show how the
lightest and most graceful wit degenerates into the heaviest
and most bombastic poetry, I will give one description out
of his tragedy, which will be enough. It is the speech
which Gonsalez addresses to Almeria :

tt

Be every day of your long life like this.

The sun, bright conquest, and your brighter eyes

'

Wycherley, Congreve, &o. 99

Have all conspired to blaze promiscuous light,

And bless this day with most unequal lustre.

Your royal father, my victorious lord,

Loaden with spoils, and ever-living laurel,

Is entering now, in martial pomp, the palace.

Five hundred mules precede his solemn march.

Which groan beneath the weight of Moorish wealth.

Chariots of war, adom'd with glitterlDg gems.

Succeed ; and next, a hundred neighing steeds.

White as the fleecy rain on Alpine hills ;

That bound, and foam, and champ the golden bit.

As they disdain'd the victory they grace.

Prisoners of war in shining fetters follow :

And captains of the noblest blood of AMc

Sweat by his chariot-wheels, and lick and grind.

With gnashing teeth, the dust his triumphs raise.

The swarming populace spread every wall,

And cling, as if with claws they did enforce

Their hold, through clifted stones stretching and staring

As if they were all eyesi and every limb

Would feed its faculty of admiration, '

While you alone retire, and shun this sight ;

This sight, which is indeed not seen (though twice

The multitude should gaze) in absence of your eyes."

This passage seems, in part, an imitation of Bolingbroke's
entry into London. The style is as different from Shak-
speare as it is from that of Witwoud and Petulant. It is
plain that the imagination of the author could not raise
itself above the burlesque. His *■ Mask of Semele,' ' Judg-
ment of Paris,' and other occasional poems, are even worse.
I would not advise any one to read them, or if I did, they
would not. "

Wycherley was before Congreve ; and his ' Country Wife '
will last longer than anything of Congreve's as a popular
acting play. It is only a pity that it is not entirely his
own ;* but it is enough so to do him never-ceasing honour,
for the best things are his own. His humour is, in
general, broader, his characters more natural, and his

* Being partly borrowed from Moli^re, as has been already
mentioned.~ED.

H 2

100 The English Comic Writers,

incidents more striking tlian Congreve's. It may be said
of Congreve, that the workmanship overlays the materials :
in Wycherley, the casting of the parts and the fable are
alone sufficient to ensure success. We forget Congreve's
characters, and only remember what they say : we re-
member Wycherley's characters, and the incidents they
meet with, just as if they were real, and forget what they
say, comparatively spealdng. Miss Peggy (or Mrs. Mar-
gery Finchwife) is a character that will last for ever, I
should hope ; and even when the original is no more, if
that should ever be, while self-will, curiosity, art, and
ignorance are to be found in the same person, it will be
just as good and as intelligible as ever in the description,
because it is built on first principles, and brought out in
the fullest and broadest manner. Agnes, in Moliere's
play, has a great deal of the same unconscious impulse
and heedless nmvete, but hers is sentimentalised and
varnished over (in the French fashion) with long-winded
apologies and analytical distinctions. It wants the same
simple force and Jiome truth. It is not so direct and
downright. Miss Peggy is not even a novice in casuistry :
she blurts out her meaning before she knows what she
is saying, and she speaks her mind by her actions oftener
than by her words. The outline of the plot is the same ;
but the point-blank hits and master-strokes, the sudden
thoughts and delightful expedients — such as her changing
the letters, the meeting her husband plump in the Park
as she is running away from him as fEist as her heels can
carry her, her being turned out of doors by her jealous
booby of a husband, and sent by him to her lover disguised
as Alicia, her sister-in-law — occur first in the modem
play. There are scarcely any incidents or situations on
the stage which tell like these for pantomimic effect,
which give such a tingling to the blood, or so completely
take away the breath with expectation and surprise.
Miss Pme, in * Love for Love ' is a lively reflection of

Wycherley, Con gr eve, &c. 101

Miss Peggy, but without the bottom and weight of metal.
Hoyden is a match for her in constitution and complete)
effect, as Corinna, in the ' Ck)nfederacy/ is in mischief :
but without the wit. Mrs. Jordan used to play all these
characters ; and as she played them, it was hard to know
which was best. Pinchwife, or Moody (as he is at
present called *), is, like others of Wycherley's moral cha-
racters, too rustic, abrupt, and cynical. He is a more
disagreeable, but less tedious character, than the husband
of Agnes, and both seem, by all accounts, to have been
rightly served. The character of Sparkish is quite new,
and admirably hit off. He is an exquisite and suffocating
coxcomb ; a pretender to wit and letters, without common
understanding, or the use of his senses. The class of
character is thoroughly exposed and understood ; but he
persists in his absurd conduct so far, that it becomes
extravagant and disgusting, if not incredible, from mere
weakness and foppery. Yet there is something in him
that we are inclined to tolerate at first, as his professing
that '' with him a wit is the £rst title to respect ;" and we
regard his imwillingness to be pushed out of the room,
and coming back, in spite of their teeth, to keep the
company of wits and raillers, as a favourable omen. But
he utterly disgraces his pretensions before he has done.
With all his faults and absurdities, he is, however, a
much less offensive character than Tattle. Homer is a
stretch of probability in the first concoction of that
ambiguous character (for he does not appear at present
on the stage as Wycherley made him^; but" notwith-
standing the indecency and indirectness of the means he
employs to carry his plans into effect, he deserves every
sort of consideration and forgiveness, both for the display
of his own ingenuity, and the deep insight he discovers
into human nature — such as it was in the time of Wy-
cherley. The author has commented on this character,

♦ i.e. In 1818.— Ed.

102 Tlie English Comic Writers.

and the double meaning of the name, in his ' Plain Dealer/
borrowing the remarks, and almost the very words, of
Moliere, who has brought forward and defended his own
work against the objections of the precise part of his
audience in his Criiigue de V Ecde des Femmes, There is
no great harm in these occasional plagiarisms, except that
they make one uncomfortable at other times, and dis-
trustful of the originality of the whole. The 'Plain
Dealer' is Wychorley's next best work, and is a most
severe and poignant moral satire. There is a heaviness
about it indeed, an extravagance, an overdoing both in the
style, the plot, and characters ; but the truth of feeling and
the force of interest prevail over every objection. The
character of Manly, the Plain Dealer, is violent, repulsive
and uncouth, which is a fault, though one that seems to
have been intended for the sake of contrast; for the
portrait of consummate, artful hypocrisy in Olivia is
perhaps rendered more striking by it. The indignation
elcited against this odious and pernicious quality by the
masterly exposure to which it is here subjected, is '^a
discipline of humanity." No one can read this play
attentively without being the better for it as long as he
lives. It penetrates to tiie core ; it shows the immorality
and hateful effects of duplicity, by showing it fixing its
harpy fangs in the heart of an honest and worthy man.
It is worth ten volumes of sermons. The scenes between
Manly after his return, Olivia, Plausible, and Novel, are
instructive examples of unblushing impudence, of shallow
pretensions to principle, and of the most mortifying
reflections on his own situation, and bitter sense of female
injustice and ingratitude on the part of Manly. The
devil of hypocrisy and hardened assurance seems worked
up to the highest pitch of conceivable e£Erontery in Olivia,
when, after confiding to her cousin the story of her
infamy, she in a moment turns round upon her for some
sudden purpose, and affecting not to know the meaning of

Wycherley, Congr&ve, &c, 103

the other's allusions to what she has just told her, re-
proaches her with forging insinuations to the prejudice of
her character and in violation of their friendship. '* Gro !
you're a censorious ill woman." This is more trying to the
patience than anything in the ' TartufEe.' The name of this
heroine, and her overtures to Fidelia as the page, seem
to have been suggested by ' Twelfth Night.' It is curious
to see how the same subject is treated by two such
different authors as Shakspeare and Wycherley. The
widow Blackacre and her son are like her lawsuit— ever-
lasting. A more lively, palpable, bustling, ridiculous
picture cannot be drawn. Jerry is a hopeful lad, though
undutifdl, and gets out of bad hands into worse. Gold-
smith evidently had an eye to these two precious cha-
racters in ' She Stoops to Conquer.' Tony Lumpkin and
his mother are of the same family, and the incident of the
theft of the casket of jewels and the bag of parchments is
nearly the same in both authors. Wycherley 's other
plays are not so good. The ' Gentleman Dancing Master '
is a long, foolish farce, in the exaggerated manner of
MoHere, but without his spirit or whimsical invention.
* Love in a Wood,* though not what one would wish it to
be for the author's sake or our own, is much better, and
abounds in several rich and highly- coloured scenes,
particularly those in which Miss Lucy, her mother Cross-
bite, Dapperwit, and Alderman Gripe are concerned.
Some of the subordinate characters and intrigues in this
comedy are grievously spun out. Wycherley, when he
got hold of a good thing, or sometimes even of a bad one,
was determined to make the most of it, and might have
said with Dogberry truly enough, " Had I the tedious-
ness of a king, I could find in my heart to bestow it all
upon your worships." In reading this author's best
works— those which one reads most frequently over, and
knows almost by heart, one cannot help thinking of the
treatment he received from Pope about his verses. It

104 The English Comic Writers.

was hardly excusable in a boj of sixteen to an old man of
serenty.

Yanbmgh comes next, and holds his own follj with the
best He is no writer at all as to mere authorship; but
he makes up for it by a prodigious fund of comic inren-
tioa and ludicrous description, bordering somewhat cm
cancatnie. Though he did not borrow from him, he was
much more like Moliere in genius than Wycherley was,
who professedly imitated him. He has none of Con-
greve's graceful refinement, and as little of Wycherley's
serious manner and studied insight into the springs of
character ; but his exhibition of [w jit * in dramatic contrast
and unlooked-for situations, where the different parties
play upon one another's fulings, and into one another's
hands, keeping up the jest like a game at battledore-ond'*
shuttlecock, and urging it to the utmost verge of breath-
less extravagance, in the mere eagerness of the fi»y, is
beyond that of any other of our writers. His £Able is not
so profoundly laid, nor his characters so well digested,
as AVycherley's (who, in these respects, bore some re-
semblance to Fielding). Yanbrugh does not lay the same
deliberate train from the outset to the conclusion, so that
the whole may hang together, and tend inevitably from
the combination of different agents and circumstances to
the same decisive point; but he works out scene after
scene, on the spur of the occasion, and from the immediate
hold they take of his imagination at the moment, without
any previous bias or ultimate purpose, much more power-
fully, with more verve, and in a richer vein of original
invention. His fancy warms and burnishes out as if he
were engaged in the real scene of action, and felt all his
faculties suddenly called forth to meet the emergency.
He has more nature than art : what he does best, he does
because he cannot help it. He has a masterly eye to the

* Itm the original edition ; bnt a letter seems to have dropped
oat at press, as the sense requires vnt, or some equivalent word.— Kd.

Wycherley, Congireve, &c. 105

advantages which certain accidental situations of character
present to him on the spot, and he executes the most
difficult and rapid theatrical movements at a moment's
warning. Of this kind are the inimitable scenes in the
* Provoked Wife/ between Eazor and Mademoiselle,
where they repeat and act over again the rencontre in the
Mulberry-walk between Constant and his mistress, than
which nothing was ever more happily conceived, or done
to more absolute perfection. That again in the ' Eelapse/
where Loveless pushes Berinthia into the closet; the
sudden meeting in the * Confederacy ' between Dick and
Mrs. Amlet ; the altercation about the letter between
Flippanta and Corinna, in the same play, and that again
where Brass, at the house of Gripe the money-scrivener,
threatens to discover his friend and accomplice, and by
talking louder and louder to him, as he tries to evade his
demands, extorts a grudging submission from him. Thi&
last scene is as follows : —

*• Dick. I wish my old hobbling mother han't been blabbing
something here she should not do.

Brass, Fear nothing, all's safe on that side yet But how speaks
young mistress's epistle? soft and tender?

Dick. As pen can write.

Brass. So you think all goes well there ?

Dick. As my heart can wish.

Brass. You are sure on't 1

Dick. Sure on't!

Brass. Why then, ceremony ajsido— {Putting on his hat'] — ^you-
and I must have a little talk, Mr. Amlet.

Dick. Ah, Brass, what art thou going to do ? wo't ruin me ?

BroMi. Look you, Dick, few words ; you are in a smooth way of
making your fortune; I hope all will roll on. But how do you
intend matters shall pass 'twixt you and me in this business ?

Dick. Death and furies 1 What a time dost take to talk on't?

Brass. Good words, or I betray you ; they have already heard of
one Mr. Amlet in the house.

Dick. Here's a son of a whore. [^Aside.

Brass. In short, look smooth, and be a good prince. I am your
valet, 'tis true: your footman, sometimes, which I'm enraged at;
but you have always had' the ascendant I confess : when we were*

106 Ths Engilish Comic Writers.

schoolfellows, you made me carry your books, make your exercise,
oim your rogueries, and sometimes tako a whipping for you. When
we were fellow-'prentices, though I was your senior, you made me
open the shop, clean my master's shoes, cut last at dinner, and eat
all the crust. In our sins too, I must own you still kept me under ;
you soar'd up to adultery with the mistress, while I was at humble
fornication with the maid. Nay, in our punishments you still made
good your post ; for when once upon a time I was sentenced but to
be whipp'd, I cannot deny but you were condemn'd to be hang'd.
So that in all times, I must confess, your inclinations have been
greater and nobler than mine ; however, I cannot consent that you
should at once fix fortune for life, and I dwell in my humilities for
the rest of my days.

Dick, Hark thee. Brass, if I do not most nobly by thee, I*m a dog.

Brass. And when ?

Dich, As soon as ever I am married.

Brass, Ay, the plague take thee.

Dick, Then you mistrust me ?

Brass. I do, by my faith. Look you. Sir, some folks we mistrust,
because we don't know them : others we mistrust, because we do
know them : and for one of these reasons I desire there may be a
bargain beforehand : if not [raising his mice] look ye, Dick Amlet —

Dick. Soft, my dear friend and companion. The dog will Vuin
me [Aside]. Say, what is't will content thee ?

Bra^s. O ho !

Dick. But how canst thou be such a barbarian?

Brass. I learnt it at Algiers.

Dick. Come, make thy Turkish demand then.

Brass. You know you gave me a bank-bUl this morning to
receive for you.

Dick. I did so, of fifty pounds; 'tis thine. So, now thou art
satisfied ; all is fixed.

Brass. It is not indeed. There's a diamond necklace you robb'd
your mother of e'en now.

Dick. Ah, you Jew !

Brass, No words.

Dick. My dear Brass !

BroM. I insist

Dick. My old friend !

Brass, Dick Amlet [raising his voice] I insist.

Dick. Ah, the cormorant [Aside], — ^Well, 'tis thine ; thou'lt never
thrive with it.

BroM. When I find it begins to do me mischief I'll give it you
again. But I must have a wedding suit

Wycherley, Congreve, dte. 107

Dick, Well.

Brass, A stock of linen.

Dick, Enough.

Brass. Not yet a silver-hilted sword.

Dick. Well, thou shalt have that too. Now thou hast everything.

Brass. Heav'n forgive me, I forgot a ring of remembrance. I
would not forget all these favours for the world: a sparkling
diamond will be always playing in my eye, and put me in mind of
them.

Dick. This unconscionable rogue! [Aside] — Well, Til bespeak
one for thee.

Brass. Brilliant

Dick. It shall. But if the thing don't succeed after all —

Brass. I am a man of honour and restore : and so, the treaty
being finished, I strike my flag of defiance, and faM into my respects
again." [Takes off his hat.

The ' Confederacy ' is a comedy of infinite contrivance
and intrigue, with a matchless spirit of impudence. It is
a fine careless eoppoae of heartless want of principle ; for
there is no anger or severity against vice expressed in it,
as in Wycherley. The author's morality in all cases
(except his ' Provoked Wife,' which was undertaken as a
penance for past peccadilloes) sits very loose upon him.
It is a little upon the turn ; ^ it does somewhat smack."
Old Palmer, as Dick Amlet, asking his mother's blessing
on his knee, was the very idea of a graceless son. — His
sweetheart Gorinna is a Miss Prue, but nature works in
her more powerfully. — Lord Foppington, in the ' Belapse/
is a most splendid caricature : he is a personification of
the foppery and folly of dress and external appearance
in full featiier. He blazes out and dazzles sober reason
with ridiculous ostentation. Still I think this character
is a copy from Etherege's 'Sir Fopling Flutter/ and
upon the whole, perhaps, Sir Fopling is ihe more natural
grotesque of the two. His soul is more in his dress ;
he is a more disinterested coxcomb. The lord is an t
ostentatious, strutting, vain-glorious blockhead ; the |
knight is an unaffected, self-complacent, serious admirer

108 Tlie English Comic Writers.

of his equipago and person. For instance, what they
severally say on the stihject of contemplating themselves
in the glass, is a proof of this. Sir Fopling thinks a
looking-glass in the room ''the best company in the
world;" it is another self to him: Lord Foppington
merely considers it as necessary to adjnst his appearance,
that he may make a figure in company. The finery of
the one has an imposing air of grandeur about it, and is
studied for effect : the other is really in love with a laced
suit, and is hand and glove with the newest-cut fashion.
He really thinks his tailor or peruke-maker the greatest
man in the world, while his lordship treats them
familiarly as necessary appendages of his person. Still
this coxcomb-nobleman's effeminacy and mock-heroic
vanity are admirably depicted, and held up to unrivalled
ridicule ; and his courtship of Miss Hoyden is excellent
in all its stages, and ends oracularly.

" Lord Foppington. — Now, for my part, I think tho wisest thing
ft man can do with an aching heart, is to put on a serene counte-
nance ; for a philosophical air is the most becoming thing in the
world to the face of a person of quality : I will therefore bear my
disgrace like a great man, and let the people see I am above an
affront, [then turning to Jus 'brother] Dear Tam, since things are
thus fallen out, pr*ythee give me leave to wish thee joy, I do it de
hon cceur, stiike me dumb : you have married a woman beautiful in
her person, charming in her airs, prudent in her conduct, constant
in her inclinations, and of a nice morality — stap my vitals !"

Poor Hoyden fares ill in his lordship's description of
her, though she could expect no better at his hands for
her desertion of him. She wants sentiment, to be sure,
but she has other qualifications — she is a fine bouncing
piece of flesh and blood. Her first announcement is
decisive — " Let loose the greyhound, and lock up Hoyden."
Her declaration, "It's well they've got me a husband,
or ecod, I'd marry the baker," comes from her mouth
like a shot from a culverin, and leaves no doubt, by its
effect upon the ear, that she would have made it good in

Wycherleyy Conffreve, &c. 109

the sequel, if she had not been provided for. Her
indifference to the man she is to marry, and her attach-
ment to the finery and the title, are justified by an
attentive observation of nature in its simplest guise.
There is, however, no harm in Hoyden; she merely
wishes to consult her own inclination : she is by no
means like Corinna in the ' Confederacy,' " a devilish girl
at the bottom," nor is it her ^eat delight to plague
other people. — Sir Timbelly Clumsy is the right worship-
ful and worthy father of so delicate an offspring. He is
a coarse, substantial contrast to the flippant and fiimsj
Lord^ Foppington . If the one is not without reason
" proud to be at the head of so prevailing a party " as
that of coxcombs, the other may look big and console
himself (under some affronts) with being a very com-
petent representative, a knight of the shire, of the once
formidable, though now obsolete class of country squires,
who had no idea beyond the boundaries of their own
estates, or the circumference of their own persons. His
unwieldy dulness gives, by the rule of contraries, a
lively sense of lightness and grace : his stupidity answers
all the purposes of wit* 'His portly paunch repels a jest
like a wool-sack : a sarcasm rebounds from him like a
ball. His presence is a cure for gravity; and he_is a
standing satire upon himself and the class in natural
history to which he belonged. Sir John Brute, in the
* Provoked Wife,' is an animal of the same English
growth, but of a cross-grained breed. He has a spice of
the demon mixed up with the brute ; is mischievous as
well as stupid ; has improved his natural parts by a town
education and example; opposes the fine-lady airs and
graces of his wife by brawling oaths, impenetrable surli-
ness, and pothouse valour; overpowers any tendency
she might have to vapours or hysterics by the fumes of
tobacco and strong beer, and thinks to be master in his
own house by roaring in taverns, reeling home drunk

110 The English Comic Writers. ,

every night, breaking lamps, and beating the watch. He
does not, however, find this lordly method answer. He
turns out to be a coward as well as a bully, and dares not
resent the injuries he has provoked by his unmanly be-
haviour. This was Grarrick's favourite part ; and I have
heard that his acting in the drunken scene, in which he
was disguised not as a clergyman, but as a woman of the
town, which was an alteration of his own to suit the
delicacy of the times, was irresistible. The ironical
conversations in this play between Belinda and Lady
Brute, as well as those in the ' Eelapse ' between Amanda
and her cousin Berinthia, will do to compare with Con-
greve in the way of wit and studied raillery, but they
will not stand the comparison. Araminta and Clarissa
keep up the ball between them with more spirit, for
their conversation is very like that of kept-mistresses ;
and the mixture of fashionable slang and professed want
of principle gives a sort of zest and high seasoning to
their confidential communications, which Yanbrugh could
supply as well as anybody. But he could not do with-
out the taint of grossness and licentiousness. Lady
Townly is not the really vicious character, nor quite the
fine lady, which the author would have her to be. Lady
Grace is so far better ; she is what she pretends to be,
merely sober and insipid. Vanbrugh's forte was not the
sentimental or didactic ; his genius flags and grows dull
when it is not put into action, and wants the stimulus
of sudden emergency, or the fortuitous collision of dif-
ferent motives, to call out all its force and vivacity. His
antitheses are happy and brilliant contrasts of character ;
his double evdendres equivocal situations ; his best jokes
are practical devices, not epigrammatic conceits. His
wit is that which is emphatically called mother-iuiL It
brings those who possess it, or to whom he lends it, into
scrapes by its restlessness, and brings them out of them
by its alacrity. Several of his fiAvourite characters are

Wycherley, Congreve, &c. Ill

knayisli, adroit adventurers, who have all the gipsy
jargon, the cunning impudence, cool presence of mindy
selfishness, and indefatigable industry ; all the excuses,
lying dexterity, the intellectual juggling and legerdemain
^cks, necessary to fit them for this sort of predatory
war&re on the simplicity, follies, or vices of mankind.
He discovers the utmost dramatic generalship in bringing
off his characters at a pinch, and by an instantaneous
riLse de guerre, when the case seems hopeless in any
other hands. The train of his associations, to express-
the same thing in metaphysical language, lies in follow-
ing the suggestions of his fancy into every possible con-
nexion of cause and effect, rather than into every possible
combination of likeness or difference. His ablest
characters show that they aro so by displaying their
ingenuity, address, and presence of mind in critical
junctures, and in their own afiairs, rather than their
wisdom or their wit " in intellectual gladiatorship,"
or in speculating on the affairs and characters of other
people.

Farquhar*s chief characters are also adventurers ; but
they are adventurers of a romantic, not a knavish stamp,
and succeed no less by their honesty than their boldness.
They conquer their difficulties, and effect their "hair-
breadth 'scapes " by the impulse of natural enthusiasm and
the 'confidence of high principles of gallantry and honour,
as much as by their dexterity and readiness at expedients*
They are real gentlemen, and only pretended impostors.
Vanbrugh's upstart heroes are without "any relish of
salvation,*' .without generosity, virtue, or any pretensions
to it. We have little sympathy for them, and no respect
at all. But we have every sort of good-will towards
Farquhar's heroes, who have as many peccadilloes to
answer for, and play as many rogue's tricks, but are
honest fellows at bottom. I know little other difference
between these two capital writers and copyists of nature^

112 The English Comic Writers,

tban that Farquhar's nature is the better nature of the
two. We seem to like both the author and his favourites.
' He has humour, character, and invention in common
with the other, with a more unaffected gaiety and spirit
of enjoyment, which overflows and sparkles in all he does:
\ He makes us laugh from pleasure oftener than from
\ malice. He somewhere prides himself in having intro-
■duced on the stage the class of comic heroes here spoken
of, which has since become a standard character, and
which represents the warm-hearted, rattle-brained, thought-
less, high-spirited young feUow, who floats on the back
of his misfortunes without repining, who forfeits appear-
ances, but saves his honour; and he gives us to under-
stand that it was his own. He did not need to be
ashamed of it. Indeed there is internal evidence that
this sort of character is his own, for it pervades his works
generally, and is the moving spirit that informs them.
His comedies have on this account probably a greater
appearance of truth and nature than almost any others.
HiR incidents succeed one another with rapidity, but
without premeditation ; his wit is easy and spontaneous ;
his style animated, imembarrassed, and flowing; his
characters full of life and spirit, and never overstrained
so as to " o'erstep the modesty of nature," though they
sometimes, from haste and carelessness, seem left in a
crude, unfinished state. There is a constant ebullition
of gay, laughing invention, cordial good humour, and flne
animal spirits, in his writings.

Of the four writers here classed together, we should
perhaps have courted Oongreve's acquaintance most, for
his wit and the elegance of his manners ; Wycherley's,
for his sense and observation on human nature; Yan-
brugh's, for his power of farcical description and telling
a story ; Farquhar's, for the pleasure of his society, and
the love of good fellowship. His flne gentlemen are not
gentlemen of fortune and fashion, like those in Congreve ;

Wycherley, Congreve, (&c. 113

but are rather " God Almighty's gentlemen." His valets
are good fellows : even his chambermaids are some of
them disinterested and sincere. But his fine ladies, it
must be allowed, are not so amiable, so witty, or accom-
plished, as those in Congreve. Perhaps they both de-
scribed women in high life as they found them : Con-
greve took their conversation, Farquhar their conduct.
In the way of fashionable vice and petrifying affectation,
there is nothing to come up to his * Lady Lurewell,' in
the ' Trip to the Jubilee.' She by no means makes good
Mr. Burke's courtly and chivalrous observation, that the
evil of vice consists principally in its want of refinement ;
and one benefit of the dramatic exhibition of such cha-
racters is, that they overturn false maxims of morality,
and settle accounts fairly and satisfactorily between
theory and practice. Her lover, Colonel Standard, is
indeed an awkward incumbrance upon so fine a lady : it
was a character that the poet did not like ; and he has
merely sketched him in, leaving him to answer for him-
self as well as he could, which is but badly. We have
no suspicion, either from his conduct, or from any hint
dropped by accident, that he is the first seducer and the
possessor of the virgin affections of Lady Lurewell. Tho
double transformation of this virago from vice to virtue,
and from virtue to vice again, her plausible pretensions
and artful wiles, her violent temper and dissolute passions,
show a thorough knowledge of the effects both of nature
and habit in making up human character. Farquhar's
own heedless turn for gallantry would be likely to throw
him upon such a character ; and his goodness of heart
and sincerity of disposition would teach him to expose
its wanton duplicity and gilded rottenness. Lurewell is
ilmost as abandoned a character as Olivia in the ' Plain
Dealer ;' but the indignation excited against her is of a
, ess serious and tragic cast. Her peevish disgust and
affected horror at everything that comes near her, form a

i

1 14 Hie English Comic Writers.

very edifying picture. Her dissatisfaction and ennui are
not mere airs and graces worn for fashion's sake; but
are real and tormenting inmates of her breast, arising
from a surfeit of pleasure and the consciousness of guilt.
All that is hateful in the caprice, ill humour, spite,
Jiauteur, folly, impudence, and affectation of the complete
woman of quality, is contained in the scene between her
and her servants in the first act. The depravity would
be intolerable, even in imagination, if the weakness were
not ludicrous in the extreme. It shows, in the highest
degree, the power of circumstances and example to pervert
the understanding, the imagination, and even the senses.
The manner in which the character of the gay, wild,
free-hearted, but not altogether profligate or unfeeling
Sir Harry Wildair, is pkyed off against the designing,
vindictive, imperious, uncontrollable, and unreasonable
humours of Lurewell, in the scene where she tries to
convince him of his wife's infidelity, while he stops his
ears to her pretended proofs, is not surpassed in modem
comedy. I shall give it here : —

" Wildair. Now, dear madam, I have secured my brother, you
have dispos'd of the colonel, and we*ll rail at love till we ha'n't a
word more to say.

LureweU. Ay, Sir Harry. Please to sit a little, Sir. You must
know I'm in a strange hmnour of asking you some questions. How
did you like your lady, pray, Sir ?

Wild. Like her I Ha, ha, ha. So very well, faith, that for her
very sake I'm in love with every woman t meet.

Lure. And did matrimony please you extremely ?

WHd. So very much, that if polygamy were allow'd, I would have
a new wife every day.

Lure. Oh, Sir Harry ! this is raillery. But your serious thoughts
upon the matter, pray.

WHd. Why then, Madam, to give you my true sentiments of
wedlock : I had a lady that I married by chance, she was virtuous
by chance, and I lov'd her by great chance. Nature gave her
beauty, education an air; and fortune threw a young fellow of
five-and-twenty in her lap. 1 courted her all day, lov'd her all
night ; she was my mistress one day, and my wife another : I found

Wycherley, Congreve, &c. 115

in one the variety of a thonsand, and the very confinement of
marriage gave me the pleasure of change.

Lure. And she was very virtuous.

Wild, Look ye, Madam, you know she was beautiful. She had
good nature about ber mouth, the smile of beauty in her cheeks,
sparkling wit in her forehead, and sprightly love in her eyes.

Lure. Pshaw! I knew her very well; the woman was well
enough. But you don't answer my question, Sir.

Wild. So, Madam, as I told you before, she was young and
beautiful, I was rich and vigorous ; my estate gave a lustre to my
love, and a swing to our enjoyment ; round, like the ring that made
us one, our golden pleasures circled without end.

Lure. Golden pleasures I Golden fiddlesticks. What d*ye tell
me of your canting stuff? Was she virtuous, I say ?

Wild. Beady to burst with envy ; but I will torment thee a little.
\Aiide,'\ So, Madam, I powder'd to please her, she dress'd to engage
me ; we toy'd away the morning in amorous nonsense, loird away
the evening in the park or the playhouse, and aU the night —
hem I

Lure. Look ye, Sir, answer my question, or I shall take it ill.

Wild. Then, Madam, there was never such a pattern of unity.
Her wants were still prevented by my supplies; my own heart
whisper'd me her desires, 'cause die herself was there; no con-
tention ever rose, but the dear strife of who should most oblige : no
noise about authority ; for neither would stoop to command, 'cause
both thought it glory to obey.

Lure, Stuff! stuff! stuff! I won't believe a word on't.

Wild. Ha, ha, ha. Then, Madam, we never felt the yoke of
matrimony, because our inclinations made us one — a power superior
to the forms of wedlock. The marriage torch had lost its weaker
light in the bright flame of mutual love that join'd our hearts
before; then —

Lure. Hold, hold, Sir ; I cannot bear it ; Sir Harry^ I'm affironted.

Wild, Ha, ha, ha. Affronted 1

Lure. Yes, Sir; 'tis an affront to any woman to hear another
commended ; and I will resent it. Li short, Sir Harry, your wife
was a —

Wild. Buz, Madam — ^no detraction. Ill tell you what she was.
So much an angel in her conduct, that though I saw another in her
arms, I should have thought the devil had rais'd the phantom, and
my more conscious reason had given my eyes the lie.

Lure. Very well ! Then I a*n*t to be believ'd, it seems. But,
d'ye hear, Sir?

WUd. Nay, Madam, do you hear I I tell yon, 'tis not in the

I 2

116 The English Comic Writers.

power of malice to cast a blot upon her fame; and though the
vanity of our sex, and the envy of yours, conspir'd both against her
honour, 1 would not hear a syllable. {Stoppi'ng his ears.

Lure. Why then, as I hope to breathe, you shall hear it. The
picture ! the picture 1 the picture ! \_Bamting aloud.

Wild. Han, tan, tan. A pistol-bullet from ear to ear.

Lure. That picture which you had just now from the French
marquis for a thousand pound; that very picture did your very
virtuous wife send to the marquis as a pledge of her very virtuous
and dying affection. So that you are both robb'd of your honour
and cheated of your money. [^oud.

Wild. Louder, louder, Madam.

Lure. I tell you, Sir, your wife was a jilt ; I know it. 111 swear
it. — She virtuous I She was a devil I

WUd. [Sings.'} Tal, al, deral.

Lure. Was ever the like seen I He won't hear me. I burst with
malice, and now he won't mind me I Won't you hear me yet ?

Wild. No, no, Madam.

Lure. Nay, then I can't bear it. [Bursts out a crying."] Sir, I
must say that you're an unworthy person, to use a woman of quality
at this rate, when she has her heart fdll of malice ; I don't know
but it may make me miscarry. Sir, I say again and again, that she
was no better than one of us, and I know it; I have seen it with
my eyes, so I have.

Wild. Good heav'ns deliver me, I beseech thee. How shall I
'scape'

Lure. Will you hear me yet? Dear Sir Harry, do but hear mo ;
I'm longing to speak.

WUd. Oh ! I have it. — ^Hush, hush, hush.

Lure. Eh ! what's the matter?

Wild. A mouse! a mouse I a mouse!

Lure. Where? where? where?

WUd. Your petticoats, your petticoats, Madam. [Lurewell shrieks
and runs."] O my head ! I was never worsted by a woman before.
But I have heard so much to know the marquis to be a villain.
[Knocking.'] Nay, then, I must run for't. [Runs out, and returjis.']
The entry is stopt by a chair coming in ; and something there is in
that chair that I will discover, if I can find a place to hide myself.
{Goes to the closet door.] Fast ! I have keys about me for most locks
about St. James'a Let me see. [Tries one key.] No, no; this
opens my Lady Planthom's back-door. [Tries another.] Nor this ;
this is the key to my Lady Stakeall's garden. [Tries a third.] Ay,
ay, this does it, faith. [Goes inio the closet.]"

\ Tho dialogue between Cherry and Archer, in the ' Beaux'

Wychertet/y Congreve, &c, 117

Stratagem,' in which she repeats her well-conned love
catechism, is as good as this, but not so fit to be repeat-ed
anywhere but on the stage. The ' Beaux' Stratagem ' is the
best of his plays, as a whole ; infinitely lively, bustling,
and full of point and interest. The assumed disguise of
the two principal characters. Archer and Aimwell, is a
perpetual amusement to the mind. Scrub is an indis-
pensable appendage to a country gentleman's kitchen, and
an exquisite confidant for the secrets of young ladies.
The 'Becruiting Ofi&cer' is not one of Farquhar's best
comedies, though it is light and entertaining. It contains
chiefly sketches and hints of characters, and the conclusion
of the plot is rather lama He informs us, in the dedica-
tion to the published play, that it was founded on some
local and personal circumstances that happened in Shrop-
shire, where he was himseK a recruiting officer ; and it
seems not unlikely that most of the scenes actually took
place at the foot of the Wrekin, The * Inconstant ' is much
superior to it. The romantic interest and impressivo
catastrophe of this play I thought had been borrowed from
the more poetical and tragedy-practised muse of Beaumont
and Fletcher ; but I find they are taken from an actual
circumstance which took place, in the author's knowledge,
at Paris. His other pieces, ' Love and a Bottle,' and the
' Twin Eivals,' are not on a par with these ; and are no
longer in possession of the stage. The public are, after
all, not the worst judges. Farquhar's ' Letters,' prefixed to
the collection of his plays, are lively, good-humoured, and
sensible ; and contain, among other things, an admirable
exposition of the futility of the dramatic unities of time
and place. This criticism preceded Dennis's remarks on
that subject, in his ' Strictures on Mr. Addison's Cato ;' and
completely anticipates all that Dr. Johnson has urged so
unanswerably on the subject, in his preface to 'Shak-
speare.'

We may date the decline of English comedy &om the

118 The English Comic Writers.

time of Farquhaf . For this several causes might be
assigned in the political and moral changes of the times ;
but among other minor ones, Jeremy Collier, in his * View
of the English Stage/ frightened the poets, and did aU he
could to spoil the stage, by pretending to reform it:
that is, by making it an echo of the pulpit, instead of a
reflection of the manners of the world. He complains
bitterly of the profsuieness of the stage ; and is for fining
the actors for every oath they utter, to put an end to the
practice ; as if common swearing had been an invention of
the poets and stage-players. He cannot endure that the
fine gentlemen drink, and the fine ladies intrigue, in the
scenes of Congreve and Wycherley, when things so con-
trary to law and gospel happened nowhere else. He is
vehement against duelling, as a barbarous custom of
which the example is suffered with impunity nowhere but
on the stage. He is shocked at the number of fortunes
that are irreparably ruined by the vice of gaming on the
'boards of the theatres. He seems to think that every
breach of the ten commandments begins and ends there.
He complains that the tame husbands of his time are
laughed at on the stage, andHhat the successful gallants
triumph, which was without precedent either in the city
or the court. He does not think it enough that the stage
" shows vice its own image, scorn its own feature," unless
they are damned at the same instant, and carried off (like
Don Juan) by real devils to the infernal regions, before
the faces of the spectators. It seems that the author
would have been contented to be present at a comedy or
a farce, like a Father Inquisitor, if there was to be an
auto da fS at the end, to bum both the actors and the poet.
This sour, nonjuring critic has a great horror and repug-
nance at poor human nature, in nearly all its shapes ; of
the existence of which he appears only to be aware throng
the stage : and this he considers as the only exception to
the practice of piety, and the performance of the whole

Wycherley, Cangreve, &c. 119

duty of man; and seems fully convinoed, that if this
nuisanoe were abated, the whole world would be regulated
according to the creed and the catechism. This is a
strange blindness and infatuation! He forgets, in his
overheated zeal, two things : First, That the stage must
be copied from real life, that the manners represented
there must exist elsewhere, and " denote a foregone con-
clusion," to satisfy common sense. Secondly, That the
stage cannot shock common decency, according to the
notions that prevail of it in any age or country, because
the exhibition is public. If the pulpit, for instance, had
banished all vice and imperfection from the world, as pur
critic would suppose, we should not have seen the offensive
reflection of them on the stage, which he resents as an
afi&ont to the cloth, and an outrage on religion. On the
contrary, with such a sweeping reformation as this theory
implies, the office of the preacher, as well as of the
player, would be gone ; and if the common peccadilloes of
lying, swearing, intriguing, fighting, drinking, gaming,
and other such obnoxious dramatic common-places, were
once fairly got rid of in reality, neither the comic poet
would be able to laugh at them on the stage, nor our
good-natured author to consign them over to damnation
elsewhere. The work is, however, written with ability,
and did much mischief: it produced those do-me-good^
lack-a-daisical, whining, make-believe comedies in the
next age (such as Steele's ' Conscious Lovers,' and others),
which are enough to set one to sleep, and where the author
tries in vain to be merry and wise in the same breath ; in
which the utmost stretch of licentiousness goes no farther
than the gallant's being suspected of keeping a mistress,
and the highest proof of courage is given in his refusing
to accept a challenge.

In looking into the old editions of the comedies of the
last age, I find the names of the best actors of those times,
of whom scarcely any record is left but in CoUey Gibber's

120 The English Comic Writers.

Lifo, and the monument to Mrs. 01d£eld in Westminster

Abbey ; which Voltaire reckons among the proofs of the

liberality, wisdom, and politeness of the English na*

tion: —

'^ Let no rude hand de&ce it»
And its forlorn hiejacet.**

Authors, after their deaths, live in their works ; players
only in their epitaphs and the breath of common tradition.
They "die and leave the world no copy." Their un-
certain popularity is as short-lived as it is dazzling; i
and in a few years nothing is known of them but that
they were.

( 121 )

LECTUEE V.

O^ THE P EBIODICA L EHflATTfiTS.

/(" " The proper study of mankind is man."

I NOW come to speak of that sort of writing which has
been so successfully cultivated in this country by our
periodical Essayists, and which consists in applying the
talents and resources of the mind to all that mixed mass
of human affairs, which, though not included under the
head of any regular art, science, or profession, falls under
the cognizance of the writer, and "comes home to the
business' and bosoms of men."

Quicquid agunt homines nostri farrago libelli,

is the general motto of this department of literature. It
does not treat of minerals or fossils, of the virtues of
plants, or the influence of planets; it does not meddle
with forms of belief or systems of philosophy, nor launch
into the world of spiritual existences; but it makes
familiar with the world of men and women, records their
actions, assigns their motives, exhibits their whims, cha-
racterises their pursuits in all their singular and endless
variety, ridicules their absurdities, exposes their incon-
sistencies, " holds the mirror up to nature, and shows the
very age and body of the time, its form and pressure ;"
takes minutes of our dress, air, looks, words, thoughts,
and actions ; shows us what we are, and what we are not ;
plays the whole game of human life over before us, and
by making us enlightened spectators of its many-coloured
scenes, enables us (if possible) to become tolerably reason-

» ^

122 The English Comic Writers.

able agents in the one in which we have to perform a
part. '^ The act and practic part of life is thns made the
mistress of our theorique." It is the best and most
natural course of study. It is in morals and manners
what the experimental is in natural philosophy, as opposed
to the dogmatical method. It does not deal in sweeping
clauses of proscription and anathema, but in nice distinc-
tions and liberal constructions. It makes up its general
accounts from details, its few theories from many facts.
It does not try to prove all black or all white as it wishes,
but lays on the intermediate colours (and most of them
not unpleasing ones), as it finds them blended with " the
web of our life, which is of a mingled yam, good and ill
together." It inquires what human life is and has been,
to show what it ought to be. It follows it into courts
and camps, into town and country, into rustic sports or
learned disputations, into the various shades of prejudice
or ignorance, of refinement or barbarism, into its private
haunts or public pageants, into its weaknesses and little-
nesses, its professions and its practices : before it pretends
to distinguish right from wrong, or one thing from
another. How, indeed, should it do so otherwise ?

" Quid sit pulchrum, quid turpe, quid utile, quid non,
Plenius et melius Chrysippo et Crantore dicit."

The writers I speak of are, if not moral philosophers,
moral historians, and that's better : or if they are both,
they found the one character upon the other ; their pre-
mises precede their conclusions ; and we put faith in their
testimony, for we know that it is true;

Montaigne was the first person who in his ' Essays ' led
the way to this kind of writing among the modems. The
great merit of Montaigne, then, was that he may be said .
to have been the first who had the courage to say as an
author what he felt as a man. And as courage is
generally the effect of conscious strength, he was probably
led to do so by the richness, truth and force of his own

f^sm

Tlie Periodical Essayists.

12S

observations on books and men. He was, in the truest
sense, a man of original mind ; that is, he had the power
of looking at things forhimself, or as they really were,
instead " of 'bUndTy trusting to, and fondly repeating what
others told him that they were. He got rid of the go-cart
of prejudice and affectation, with the learned lumber that
follows at their heels, because he could do without them.
In taking up his pen he did not set up for a philosopher,
wit, orator, or moralist, but he became all these by merely
daring to tell us whatever passed through his mind, in its
naked simplicity and force, that he thought anyways
worth communicating. He did not, in the abstract
eharacter of an author, undertake to say all that could be
said upon a subject, but what in his capacity as an
inquirer after truth he happened to know about it. He
was neither a pedant nor a bigot. He neither supposed
that he was bound to know all things, nor that all things
wore bound to conform to what he had fancied or would
have them to be. In treating^ of men and manners,' he
spoke of them as he found them, not according to pre-
conceived notions and abstract dogmas ; and he began by
teaching us what he himself was. In criticising books ho
did not compare them with rules and systems, but told us
what he saw to like or dislike in them. He did not take
his standard of excellence " according to an exact scale ''
of Aristotle, or faU out with a work that was good for
anything, because ''not one of the angles at the four
corners was a right one." He was, in a word, the first
author who was not a bookmaker, and who wrote not to
make converts of others to established creeds and pre-
judices, but to satisfy his own mind of the truth of things.
In this respect we know not which to be most charmed
with, the author or the man. There is an inexpressible
frankness and sincerity, as well as power, in what he
writes. There is no attempt at imposition or conceaLnent,^
no juggling tricks or solemn mouthing, no laboured at-^

\

124 The English Comic Writers.

tempts at proying himseK always in the right, and every-
body else in the wrong ; he says what is uppermost, lays
open what floats at the top or the bottom of his mind, and
'deserves Pope's character of him, where he professes to

" pour out all as plain

As downright Shippen, or as old Montaigne."*

He does not converse with us like a pedagogue with his
pupil, whom he wishes to make as great a blockhead as
himself, but like a philosopher and friend who has passed
through life with thought and observation, and is willing
to enable others to pass through it with pleasure and
profit. A writer of this stamp, I confess, appears to me
as much superior to a common bookworm, as a library of
real books is superior to a mere bookcase, painted and
lettered on the outside with the names of celebrated works.
As he was the first to attempt this new way of writing, so
the same strong natural impulse which prompted the un-
dertaking, carried him to the end of his career. The same
force and honesty of mind which urged him to throw off
the shackles of custom and prejudice, would enable him
to complete his triumph over them. He has left little for
his successors to achieve in the way of just and original
speculation on human life. Nearly all the thinking of
the two last centuries of that kind which the French de-
nominate morale observairice, is to be found in Montaigne's
* Essays :' there is the germ, at least, and generally much
more. He sowed the seed and cleared away the rubbish,
even where others have reaped the fruit, or cultivated and
decorated the soil to a greater degree of nicety and per-
fection. There is no one to whom the old Latin adage is
more applicable than to Montaigne, " Pereant isti qui ante
no8 nostra dixerurU'' There has been no new impulse
given to thought since his time. Among the specimens
of criticisms on authors which he has left us, are those on

♦ Why Pope should say in reference to him, "Or more icise
'Oiarron/' is not easy to determine.

The Periodical Essayists. 125

Virgil, Ovid, and Boccaccio, in the account of books
which he thinks worth reading, or (which is the same
thing) which he finds he can read in his old age, and
which may be reckoned among the few criticisms which
are worth reading at any age.*

Montaigne's * Essays ' were translated into English by
Charles Cotton, who was one of the wits and poets of the-
age of Charles II. ; and Lord Halifax, one of the noble
critics of that day, declared it to be *' the book in the
world he was the best pleased with." This mode of
familiar essay- writing, free from the trammels of the
schools, and the airs of professed authorship, was snccess-

* As an instance of his general power of reasoning, I shall give
his chapter entitled ' One Man's Profit is another's Loss,' in which
he has nearly anticipated Mandeville's celebrated paradox of private
vices being public benefits : —

*^ Demades, the Athenian, condemned a fellow-citizen, who fur-
nished out funerals, for demanding too great a price for his goods :
and if he got an estate, it must be by the death- of a great many
people : but I think it a sentence ill-grounded, forasmuch as no
profit can be made but at the expense of some other person, and
that every kind of gain is by that rule liable to be condemned. The
tradesman thrives by the debauchery of youth, and the faimer by
the dearuess of com ; the architect by the ruin of buildings ; the
officers of justice by quarrels and law-suits ; nay, even the honour
and function of divines is owing to our mortality and vices. No
physician takes pleasure in the health even of his best friends, said
the ancient Greek comedian, nor soldier in the peace of his country ;
and so of the rest. And, what is yet worse, let every onn but
examine his own heart, and he will find that his private wishes
spring and grow up at the expense of some other person. Upon
which consideration this thought came into my head, that nature
does not hereby deviate from her general policy ; for the naturalists
hold, that the birth, nourishment, and increase of any one thing is
the decay and corruption of another :

" Nam qiiodcunque suie mutatum finihua exit,
Continuo hoc mors est iJUuSt quodfuit ante. i. e.

For what from its own confines chang'd doth pass.
Is straight the death of what before it was."

Vol. I. Chap, ixu

126 The Englidi Comic Writers,

fully imitated, about the same time, by Cowley and Sir
William Temple, in their miscellaneous ' Essays,' which
are very agreeable and learned talking upon paper. Lord
Shaftesbury, on the contrary, who aimed at the same easy,
degcigS mode of communicating his thoughts to the world,
has quite spoiled his matter, which is sometimes valuable,
by his manner, in which he carries a certain flaunting,
flowery, figurative, flirting style of amicable condescension
to the reader, to an excess more tantalising than the most
«tarched and ridiculous formality of the age of James I.
There is nothing so tormenting as the affectation of ease
and freedom from affectation.

The ice being thus thawed, and the barrier that kept
■authors at a distance from common sense and feeling
broken through, the transition was not difficult from Mon-
taigne and his imitators to our Periodical Essayists.
These last applied the same unrestrained expression of
their thoughts to the more immediate and passing scenes
of life, to temporary and local matters ; and in order to
discharge the invidious office of Censor Morum more freely,
and with less responsibility, assumed some fictitious and
humorous disguise, which, however, in a great degree
corresponded to their own peculiar habits and character.
By thus concealing their own name and person under the
title of the ' Tatler,* * Spectator/ &c., they were enabled to
inform us more fully of what was passing in the world,
while the dramatic contrast and ironical point of view to
which the whole is subjected, added a greater liveliness
and piqmncy to the descriptions. The philosopher and
wit here commences newsmonger, makes himself master of
" the perfect spy o' th' time," and from his various walks
and turns through life, brings home little curious specunens
of the humours, opinions, and manners of his contem-
poraries, as the botanist brings home different plants and
weeds, or the mineralogist different shells and fossils, to
illustrate their several theories, and be useful to mankind.

■^

The Periodical Essayists, 127

The first of these papers that was attempted in this
country was set np by Steele in the beginning of the last
century ; and of all our Periodical Essayists, the Taden'
(for that was the name he assumed) has always appeared
to me the most amusing and agreeable. Montaigne, whom
I have proposed to consider as the father of this kind of
personal authorship among the modems, in which the
reader is admitted behind the curtain, and sits down with
the writer in his gown and slippers, was a most mag-
nanimous and undisguised egotist ; but Isaac Bickerstf^
Esq., was the more disinterested gossip of the two. The
French author is contented to describe the peculiarities of
his own mind and constitution, which he does with a
copious and unsparing hand. The English journalist
good-naturedly lets you into the secret both of his own
affairs and those of others. A young lady, on the other
side Temple Bar, cannot be seen at her glass for half a
day together, but Mr. Bickerstaff takes due notice of it ;
and he has the first intelligence of the symptoms of the
heUe passion appearing in any young gentleman at the
West-end of the town. The departures and arrivals of
widows with handsome jointures, either to bury their grief
in the country, or to procure a second husband in town,
are punctually recorded in his pages. He is well ac-
quainted with the celebrated beauties of the preceding age
at the court of Charles II. ; and the old gentleman (as he
feigns himseK) often grows romantic in recounting *' the
disastrous strokes which his youth suffered" from the
glances of their bright eyes, and their unaccountable
caprices. In particular, he dwells with a secret satisfaction
on the recollection of one of his mistresses, who left him
for a richer rival, and whose constant reproach to her
husband, on occasion of any quarrel between them, was,
*' I, that might have married the fsunous Mr. Bickerstaff,
to be treated in this manner !" The club at the Trumpet
consists of a set of persons abnost as well worth Jmowing

128 The English Comic Writers.

as himself. The cavalcade of the justice of the peace, the
knight of the shire, the country squire, and the young
gentleihan, his nephew, who came to wait on him at his
chambers, in such form and ceremony, seem not to have
settled the order of their precedence to this hour ;* and I
should hope that the upholsterer and his companions, who
used to sun themselves in the Green Park, and who broke
their rest and fortunes to maintain the balance of power
in Europe, stand as fair a chance for immortality as some
modem politicians. Mr. Bickerstaff himself is a gentleman
and a scholar, a humorist, and a man of the world ; with
a great deal of nice easy nawete about him. If he walks
out and is caught in a shower of rain, he makes amende
for this unlucky accident by a criticism on the shower in
* Virgil,' and concludes with a burlesque copy of verses
on a city shower. He entertains us, when he dates &om
his own apartments, with a quotation from Plutarch, or a
moral reflection : from the Grecian coflee-house, with
politics ; and from Will's or the Temple, with the poets
and players, the beaux and men of wit and pleasure about
town. In reading the pages of the ' Tatler,' we seem as
if suddenly carried back to the age of Queen Aime, of
toupees and full-bottomed periwigs. The whole appear-
ance of our dress and manners undergoes a delightful
metamorphosis. The beaux and the belles are of a quite
different species from what they are at present ; we dis-
tinguish the dappers, the smarts, and the pretty fellows,
as they pass by Mr. Lilly's shop-windows in the Strand ;
we are introduced to Betterton and Mrs. Oldfleld behind
the scenes ; are made familiar with the persons and per-
formances of Will Estcourt or Tom Durfey ; we listen to
a dispute at a tavern on the merits of the Duke of Marl-
borough or Marshal Turenne ; or are present at the first
rehearsal of a play by Yanbrugh, or the reading of a new
poem by Mr. Pope. The privilege of thus virtually

♦ No. 125.

The Periodical Essayists. 129

transporting ourselves to past times is even greater than
that of visiting distant places in reality. London, a
hundred years ago, would be much better worth seeing
than Paris at the present moment.

It will be said, that all this is to be found, in the same
or a greater degree, in the ' Spectator.' For myself, I do
not think so ; or at least, there is in the last work a much
greater proportion of commonplace matter. I have, on
this account, always preferred the * Tatler ' to the * Spec-
tator.' Whether it is owing to my having been earlier or
better acquainted with the one than the other, my pleasure
in reading these two admirable works is not in proportion
to their comparative reputation. The ' Tatler ' contains
only half the number of volumes, and, I will venture to
say, nearly an equal quantity of sterling wit and sense.
^' The first sprightly runnings " are there : it has more of
the original spirit, more of the freshness and stamp of
nature. The indications of character and strokes of
humour are more true and frequent ; the reflections that
suggest themselves arise more from the occasion, and are
less spun out into regular dissertations. They are more
like the remarks which occur in sensible conversation, and
less like a lecture. Something is left to the understanding
of the reader. Steele seems to have gone into his closet
chiefly to set down what he observed out of doors,
Addison seems to have spent most of his time in his
Btudy, and to have spun out and wire-drawn the hints,
which he borrowed from Steele, or took from nature, to
the utmost. I am far from wishing to depreciate Addison's
talents, but I am anxious to do justice to Steele, who was,
I think, upon the whole a less artificial and more original '
writer. The humorous descriptions of Steele resemble '
loose sketches, or fragments of a comedy ; those of Addison
are rather comments or ingenious paraphrases on the
genuine text. The characters of the club, not only in the
• Tatler,' but in the * Spectator,' were drawn by Steele.

130 The English Comic Writers,

That of Sir Eoger de Ooverley is among the number.
Addison has, however, gained himself immortal honour
by his manner of filling up this last character. Who is
there that can forget, or be insensible to, the inimitable
nameless graces and varied traits of nature and of old
English character in it : to his unpretending virtues and
amiable weaknesses: to his modesty, generosity, hos-
pitality, and eccentriG whims : to the respect of his neigh-
bours, and the affection of his domestics : to his wayward,
hopeless, secret passion for his fair enemy, the widow, in
which there is more of real romance and true delicacy
than in a thousand tales of knight-errantry (we perceive
the hectic flush of his cheek, the faltering of his tongue
in speaking of her bewitching airs and '' tiie whiteness of
her hand ") : to the havoc he makes among the game in
his neighbourhood : to his speech from the bench, to show
the Spectator what is thought of him in the country:
to his unwillingness to be put up as a sign-post, and his
having his own likeness turned into the Saracen's head :
to his gentle reproof of the baggage of a gipsy that tells
him '^ he has a widow in his line of life :'' to his doubts
as to the existence of witchcraft, and protection of reputed
witches: to his account of the family pictures, and his
choice of a chaplain : to his falling asleep at church, and
his reproof of John Williams, as soon as he recovered
from his nap, for talking in sermon-time. The characters
of Will Wimble and Will Honeycomb are not a whit
behind their friend, Sir Boger, in delicacy and felicity.
The delightful simplicity and good-humoured ofliciousness
in the one are set off by the gi'aceful affectation and
courtly pretension in the other. How long since I first
became acquainted with these two characters in the * Spec-
tator r What old-feishioned friends they seem, and yet I
am not tired of them like so many other friends, nor they
of me ! How airy these abstractions of the poet's pen
stream over the dawn of our acquaintance with human

The Periodical Essayists, 131

life ! how they glance their febirest colours on the prospect
before ns 1 how pure they remain in it to the last, like the
rainbow in the evening-cloud, which the rude hand of
time and experience can neither soil nor dissipate ! What
a pity that we cannot find the reality, and yet if we did,
the dream would be over. I once thought I knew a Will
Wimble,* and a Will Honeycomb,| but they turned out
but indifferently ; the originals in the ' Spectator ' still
read, word for word, the same that they always did. We
have only to turn to the page, and find them where we
left them! Many of the most exquisite pieces in the
' Tatler,' it is to be observed, are Addison's, as the * Court
of Honour ' and the ' Personification of Musical Instru-
ments,' with ahnost all those papers that form regular sets
or series. I do not know whether the picture of the
family of an old college acquaintance, in the ' Tatler,*
where the children run to let Mr. Bickerstaff in at the
door, and where the one that loses the race that way,
turns back to tell the father that he is come : with the
nice gradation of incredulity in the little boy who is got
into * Guy of Warwick ' and the ' Seven Champions,' and
who shakes his head at the improbability of ^ iBsop's
Fables,' is Steele's or Addison's, though I believe it belongs
to the former. The account of the two sisters, one of
whom held up her head higher than ordinary, from having
on a pair of flowered garters, and that of the married lady ,
who complained to the * Tatler' of the neglect of her
husband, with her answers to some heme questions that
were put to her, are unquestionably Steele's. If the
* Tatler ' is not inferior to the * Spectator ' as a record of
manners and character, it is superior to it in the interest

* See Wheeler's • Dictionary of the Noted Names of Fiction,' 1866,
art. Wimble. — Ed.

t Honeycomb was also one of the names introdnced into the
*• Spectator,' and was at a later period adopted by Leigh Hnnl^ to
whom the writer here alludes. — ^Ed.

K 2

132 The English Comic Writers.

of many of the stories. Several of the incidents related
there by Steele have never been surpassed in the heart-
rending pathos of private distress. I might refer to those
of the lover and his mistress, when the theatre, in which
they were, caught fire ; of the bridegroom, who by accident
kills his bride on the day of their marriage ; the story of
Mr. Eustace and his wife ; and the fine dream about his
own mistress when a youth. What has given its superior
reputation to the ' Spectator,' is the greater gravity of its
pretensions, its moral dissertations and critical reasonings,
by which I confess myself less edified than by other things,
which are thought more lightly of. Systems and opinions
change, but nature is always true. It is the moral and
didactic tone of the * Spectator ' which makes us apt to
think of Addison (according to Mandeville's sarcasm) as
" a parson in a tie-wig.*' Many of his moral Essays are,
however, exquisitely beautiful and quite happy. Such
are the reflections on cheerfulness, those in Westminster
Abbey, on the Eoyal Exchange, and particularly some
very afiecting ones on the death of a young lady in the
fourth volume. The^e, it must be allowed, are the per-
fection of elegant sermonizing. His critical Essays are
not so good. I prefer Steele's occasional selection of
beautiful poetical passages, without any affectation of
analysing their beauties, to Addison's finer-spun theories.
The best criticism in the ' Spectator,' that on the * Car-
toons of Eaphael,' of which Mr. Fuseli has availed himself
with great spirit in his * Lectures,' is by Steele.* I owed
this acknowledgment to a writer who 1ms so often put me
in good humour with myself, and everything about me,
when few things else could, and when the tomes of casuistry
and ecclesiastical history, with which the little duodecimo

♦ The antithetical style and verbal paradoxes which Burke was
so fond of, in which the epithet is a seeming contradiction to the
substantive, such as " proud submission and dignified obedience,"
are, I think, first to be found in the • Tatler.*

The Periodical Essayists. 133

▼oltunes of the * Tatler ' were overwhelmed and surrounded,
in the only library to which I had access when a boy,* had
tried their tranquillising effects upon me in vain. I had
not long ago in my hands, by favour of a friend, an original
copy of the quarto f edition of the * Tatler,' with a list of
ihe subscribers. It is curious to see some names there
which we should hardly think of (that of Sir Isaac Newton
is among them), and also to observe the degree of interest
excited by those of the different persons, which is not
determined according to the rules of the Heralds' College.
One literary name lasts as long as a whole race of heroes
and their descendants ! The ' Guardian,' which followed
the ' Spectator,' was, as may be supposed, inferior to it.

The dramatic and conversational turn which forms the
distinguishing feature and greatest charm of the * Spec-
tator ' and ' Tatler,' is quite lost in the ' Kambler ' by Dr.
Johnson. There is no reflected light thrown on human
life from an assumed character, nor any direct one from a
display of the author's own. The * Tatler ' and ' Spec-
tator ' are, as it were, made up of notes and memorandums
of the events and incidents of the day, with flnished
studies after nature, and characters fresh from the life,
which the writer moralises upon, and turns to account as
they come before him : the * Eambler' is a collection of
moral Essays, or scholastic theses, written on set subjects, \
and of which the individual characters and incidents are ,
merely artificial illustrations, brought in to give a pre- -i
tended relief to the dryness of didactic discussion. The
^ Hambler ' is a splendid and imposing common-place book
of general topics, and rhetorical declamation on the con-
duct and business of human life. In this sense, there is
hardly a reflection that had been suggested on such subjects
which is not to be found in this celebrated work, and there

♦ Probably his father's. See • Memoirs of William Hazlitt/ 1867,
i. 33.— Ed.
t Folio, not quarto. — ^Ed.

^t

134 Tlie English Comic Writers.

is, perhapB, hardly a reflection to be found in it which had
not been already snggested and developed by some other
author, or in the common course of conversation. The
mass of intellectual wealth here heaped together is
immense ; but it is rather the result of gradual accumula-
tion, the produce of the general intellect labouring in the
mine of knowledge and reflection, than dug out of the
quarry, and dragged into the light by the industry and
sagacity of a single mind. I am not here saying that Dr.
Johnson was a man without originality, compared with the
^ordinary run of men's minds ; but he was not a man of
/original thought or genius, in the sense in which Mon-
taigne or Lord Bacon was. He opened no new vein of
precious ore, nor did he light upon any single pebbles of
uncommon size and unrivalled lustre. We seldom meet
with anything to "give us pause;" he does not set us
thinking for the first time. His reflections present them-
selves like reminiscences; do not disturb the ordinary
march of our thoughts ; arrest our attention by the state-
liness of their appearance and the costliness of their garb,
but pass on and mingle with the throng of our impressions.
After closing the volumes of the 'Bambler,' there is
nothing that we remember as a new trtith gained to the
mind, nothing indelibly stamped upon the memory ; nor is
there any passage that we wish to turn to as embodying
any known principle or observation with such force and
beauty that justice can only be done to the idea in the
author's own words. Such, for instance, are many of the
passages to be found in Burke, which shine by their own
light, belong to no class, have neither equal nor counter-
part, and of which we say that no one but the author
could have written them 1 There is neither the same
boldness of design, nor mastery of execution in Johnson.
In the one, the spark of genius seems to have met with its
congenial matter : the shaft is sped ; the forked lightning
dresses up the face of nature in ghastly smiles, and the

The Periodical Essayists. 135

lond thunder rolls far away from the ruin that is made.
Dr. Johnson's style, on the contrary, resembles rather the
mmbling of mimic thunder at one of our theatres ; and
the light he throws upon a subject is like the dazzling
effect of phosphorus, or an ignis fatuus of words. There
is a wide difference, however, between perfect originality
and perfect common-place : neither ideas nor expressions
are trite or vulgar because they are not quite new. They
are valuable, and ought to be repeated, if they have not
become quite common; and Johnson's style both of
reasoning and imagery holds the middle rank between
startling novelty and vapid common-place. Johnson has '
as much originality of thinking as Addison; but then he/
wants his familiarity of illustration, knowledge of cha-'
racter, and delightful humour. What most distinguishes^
Dr. Johnson from other writers is the pomp and
uniformity of his style. All his periods are cast in the
same mould, are of the same size and shape, and conse-
quently have little fitness to the variety of things he pro-
fesses to treat of. His subjects are fiEuniliar, but the
author is always upon stilts. He has neither ease nor
simplicity, and his efforts at playfulness, in part, remind
one of the lines in Milton : —

The elephant

To make them sport wreath'd his proboscis lithe."

His 'Letters from Correspondents,' in particular, are
more pompous and unwieldy than what he writes in his
own person. This want of relaxation and variety of
manner has, I think, after the first effects of novelty and
surprise were over, been prejudicial to the matter. It takes
from the general power not only to please, but to instruct.
The monotony of style produces an apparent monotony of
ideas. What is really striking and valuable, is lost in
the vain ostentation and circumlocution of the expression ;
for when we find the same pains and pomp of diction

136 Tlie English Comic Writers.

bestowed upon the most trifling as upon the most impor-
tant parts of a sentence or discourse, we grow tired of
distinguishing between pretension and reality, and are
disposed to confound the tinsel and bombast of the
phraseology with want of weight in the thoughts. Thus,
from the imposing and oracular nature of the style, people
are tempted at first to imagine that our author's specula-
tions are all wisdom and profundity: till having found
out their mistake in some instances, they suppose that there
is nothing but commonplace in them, concealed under
verbiage and pedantry ; and in both they are wrong. The
fault of Dr. Johnson's style is, that it reduces all things to
the same artificial and unmeaning leveL It destroys all
shades of difference, the association between words and
things. It is a perpetual parados? and innovation. He
condescends to the familiar till we are ashamed of our
interest in it : he expands the little till it looks big. " If
he were to write a fable of little fishes," as Goldsmith said
of him, ''he would make them speak like great whales."
We can no more distinguish the most familiar objects in
his description of them, than we can a well-known face
under a huge painted mask. The structure of his
sentences, which was his own invention, and which has
been generally imitated since his time, is a species of
rhyming in prose, where one clause answers to another in
measure and quantity, like the tagging oT ByHables at the
end of a verse ; the close of the period follows as mecha-
nically as the oscillation of a pendulum,, the sense is
balanced with the sound ; each sentence, revolving round
its centre of gravity, is contained with itself like a
couplet, and each paragraph forms itself into a stanza.
Dr. Johnson is also a complete balance-master in the
topics of morality. He never encourages hope, but he
counteracts it by fear; he never elicits a truth, but he
suggests some objection in answer to it. He seizes and
alternately quits the olue of reason, lest it should involve

The Periodical Essayists. 137

h im in the labyrinths of endless error: ha wants confi-
dence in himself jyid his fellows. He dares not trust him-
self with the immediate impressions-of things, for fear of
compromising his dignity ; or follow them into their con-
sequences, for fear of committing his prejudices. His
timidity is the result, not of ignorance, but of morbid
apprehension. '' He runs the greatr circle, and is still at
home." No advance is made by his writings in any senti-
ment, or mode of reasoning. Out of the pale of established
authority and received dogmas, all is sceptical, loose, and
desultory: he seems in imagination to strengthen the
dominion of prejudice, as he weakens and dissipates that
of reason ; and round the rock of faith and power, on the
edge of which he slumbers blindfold and imeasy, the
waves and billows of imcertain and dangerous opinion
roar and heave for evermore. His ' Easselas ' is the most
melancholy and debilitating moral speculation that ever
was put forth. Doubtful of the faculties of his mind, as
of his organs of vision, Johnson trusted only to his feel-
ings and his fears. He cultivated a belief in witches as-
an out-guard to the evidences of religion; and abused
Milton, and patronised Lauder, in spite of his aversion to
his countrymen, as a step to secure the existing establish-
ment in church and state. This was neither right feeling
nor sound logic.

The most triumphant record of the talents and cha-
racter of Johnson is to be found in Boswell's Life of him.
The man was superior to the author. When he threw
aside his pen, which he regarded as an incumbrance, he
became not only learned and thoughtful, but acute, witty,
humorous, natural, honest ; hearty and determined, '* the
king of good fellows and wale of old men.'' There are as
many smart repartees, profound remarks, and keen invec-»
tives to be found in Boswell's " inventory of all he said,'*
as are recorded of any celebrated man. The life and
dramatic play of his conversation forms a contrast to his.

138 The English Comic Writers.

written works. His natural powers and nndisgnised opi-
nions were called out in conyivial intercourse. In public,
be practised with the foils on : in private, be unsbeatbed
tbe sword of controversy, and it was " tbe Ebro's temper."
Tbe eagerness of opposition roused bim from bis natural
sluggisbness and acquired timidity ; be returned blow for
blow ; and wbetber tbe trial were of argument or wit, none
of bis rivals could boast mucb of tbe encounter. Burke
seems to bave been tbe only person wbo bad a cbance with
bim ; and it is tbe unpardonable sin of Boswell's work,
tbat be bas purposely omitted tbeir combats of strength
and skill. Goldsmith asked, '' Does be wind into a sub-
ject like a serpent, as Burke does ?" And when exhausted
with sickness, be himself said, " If tbat fellow Burke were
here now, be would kill me." It is to be observed, tbat
Johnson's colloquial style was as blunt, direct, and down-
right, as bis style of studied composition was involved and
circuitous. As when Topbam Beauclerc and Langton
knocked bim up at bis chambers, at three in tbe morning,
and be came to the door with the poker in his hand, but
seeing them, exclaimed, " What, is it you, my lads ? then
I'll bave a frisk with you I" And be afterwards
reproaches Langton, wbo was a literary milksop, for leav-
ing them to go to an engagement *' with some un-ideal
girls." What words to come from the mouth of the great
moralist and lexicographer! His good deeds were as
many as his good sayings. His domestic habits, bis ten-
derness to servants, and readiness to oblige his friends ;
tbe quantity of strong tea tbat he drank to keep down sad
thoughts; bis many labours reluctantly begun and
irresolutely laid aside ; his honest acknowledgment of bis
own, and indulgence to the weaknesses of others; bis
throwing himself back in the post-chaise with Boswell,
and saying, " Now I think I am a good-humoured fellow,"
though nobody thought bim so, and yet he was ; bis quit-
ting the society of Grarrick and bis actresses, and his

The Periodical Essayists. 139

reason for it ; his dining with Wilkes, and his kindness to
Goldsmith ; his sitting with the young ladies on his knee
at the Mitre, to give them good advice, in which situation,
if not explained, he might be taken for Falstaff ; and last
and noblest, his carrying the unfortunate victim of disease
and dissipation on Ids back up through Fleet Street (an
act which realises the parable of the good Samaritan)* —
all these, and innumerable others, endear him to the
reader, and must be remembered to his lasting honour.
He had faults, but they lie buried with him. He had his
prejudices and his intolerant feelings ; but he suffered
enough in the conflict of his own mind with them. For if
no man can. be happy in the free exercise of his reason,
no wise man can be happy without it. His were not
time-serving, heartless, hypocritical prejudices ; but deep,
inwoven, not to be rooted out but with life and hope, which
he found from old habit necessary to his own peace of
mind, and thought so to the peace of mankind. I do not
hate, but love him for them. They were between himself
and his conscience; and should be left to that higher
tribunal, " where they in trembling hope repose, the bosom
of his Father and his God." In a word, he has left
behind him few wiser or better men.

The herd of his imitators showed what he was by their
disproportionate effects. The Periodical Essayists
that succeeded the ' Hambler ' are, and deserve to be, ^ttle
read at present. The 'Adventurer,' by Hawksworth, is
completely trite and vapid, aping all the fiEralts of
Johnson's style, without anything to atone for them. The
sentences are often absolutely unmeaning ; and one half of
each might regularly be left blank. The * World,' and
* Connoisseur,' which followed, are a little better ; and in
the last of these there is one good idea, that of a man in
indifferent health, who judges of every one's title to
respect from their possession of this blessing, and bows to
* See * Memoirs of William HazUtt,' 1867, i., 23a— Ed.

140 The English Comic Writers.

a sturdy beggar with sound limbs and a florid complexion^
while be tnms bis badk upon a lord who is a valetudinarian.
Goldsmith's ' Citizen of the World,' like all bis works,
bears the stamp of the author's mind. It does not '' go
about to cozen reputation without the stamp of merit."
He is more observing, more original, more natural and
picturesque than Johnson. His work is written on the
model of the ' Persian Letters ;' and contrives to give an
abstracted and somewhat perplexing view of things, by
opposing foreign prepossessions to our own, and thus
stripping objects of their customary disguises. Whether
truth is elicited in this collision of contrary absurdities, I
do not know ; but I confess the process is too ambiguous
and full of intricacy to be very amusing to my plain
understanding. For Hght summer reading, it is like
walking in a garden full of traps and pitfalls. It
necessarily gives rise to paradoxes, and there are some
very bold ones in the Essays, which would subject an
author less established to no very agreeable sort of censura
literaria. Thus the Chinese philosopher exclaims very
unadvisedly, " The bonzes and priests of all religions keep
up superstition and imposture: all reformations begin
with the laity." Goldsmith, however, was staunch in his
practical creed, and might bolt speculative extravagances
with impunity. There is a striking difference in this
respect between him and Addison who, if he attacked
authority, took care to have common sense on his side, and
never hazarded anything offensive to the feelings of
others, or on the strength of his own discretional opinion.
There is another inconvenience in this assumption of an
exotic character and tone of sentiment, that it produces an
inconsistency between the knowledge which the individual
has time to acquire, and which the author is bound to
communicate. Thus the Chinese has not been in England
three d4ys before he is acquainted with the characters of
the three countries which compose this kingdom, and

The Periodical Essayists. 141

describes them to his friend at Canton, by extracts from
the newspapers of each metropolis. The nationality of
Scotchmen is thus ridiculed : — " EdinburgJi, We are
positive when we say that Sanders Macgregor, lately
executed for horse-stealing, is not a native of Scotland, but
bom at Carrickfergus." Now this is very good ; but how
should our Chinese philosopher find it out by instinct ?
Beau Tibbs, a prominent character in this little work, is
the best comic sketch since the time of Addison; un-
rivalled in his finery, his vanity, and his poverty,

I have only to mention the names of the ' Lounger ' and
the * Mirror,' which are ranked by the author's admirers
with Sterne for sentiment, and with Addison for humour.
I shall not enter into that : but I know that the story of
* La Koche ' is not like the story of * Le Fevre,' nor one
hundredth part so good. Do I say this from prejudice to
the author? No: for I have read his novels. Of the
' Man of the World ' I cannot think so favourably as some
others ; nor shall I here dwell on the picturesque and
romantic beauties of Julia d^ Boubign^, the early favourite
of the author of * Kosamond Gray ;' but of the * Man of
Feeling ' I would speak with grateful recollections : nor
is it possible to forget the sensitive, irresolute, interesting
Harley ; and that lone figure of Miss Walton in it, that
floats in the horizon, dim and ethereal, the day-dream of
her lover's youthful fancy — ^bettor, far better than all the
realities of life 1

142 The English Comic Writers.

LECTUEE VI.

ON THE ENGLISH NOVELISTS.

Thebb is an exclamation in one of Gray's Letters — '^ Be
mine to read eternal new romances of Marivauz and
Crebillon \" If I did not ntter a similar aspiration at the
conclusion of the last new novel which I read (I would
not give offence by being more particular as to the name),,
it was not from any want of affection for the class of
writing to which it belongs : for, without going so fiEhr as
the celebrated French philosopher, who thought that more
was to be learnt from good novels and romances than
from the gravest treatises on history and morality, yet
there are few works to which I am of tener tempted to turn
for profit or delight, than to the standard productions in
this species of composition. We find there a close
imitation of men and manners ; we see the very web and
texture of society as it really exists, and as we meet with
it when we come into the world. If poetry has " some-
thing more divine in it," thiB savours more^of humanity*
We are brought acquainted with the motives and characters
of mankind, imbibe our notions of virtue and vice from
practical examples, and are taught a knowledge of the
world through the airy medium of romance. As a record
of past manners and opinions, too, such writings afford the
best and fullest information. For example, I should be at
a loss where to find in any authentic documents of the
same period so satisfactory an account of the general state
of society, and of moral, political, and religious feeling in
the reign of George IL, as we meet with in the ^ Adventures

The English Novelists, 143

of Joseph Andrews and bis friend Mr. Abraham Adams.^
This work, indeed, I take to be a perfect piece of statistics
in its kind. In looking into any regular history of that
period, into a learned and eloquent charge to a grand jury
or the clergy of a diocese, or into a tract on controversial
divinity, we should hear only of the ascendancy of the
Protestant succession, the horrors of Popery, the triumph
of civil and religious liberty, the wisdom and moderation
of the sovereign, the happiness of the subject, and the
flourishing state of manufactures and commerce. But if
we really wish to know what all these flne-sounding name&
come to, we cannot do better than turn to the works of
those who, having no other object than to imitate nature,
could only hope for success from the fidelity of their
pictures, and were bound (in seK-defence) to reduce the
boasts of vague theorists and the exaggerations of angry
di£fputants to the mortifying standard of reality. Extremes
are said to meet ; and the works of imagination, as they
are called, sometimes come the nearest to truth and nature..
Fielding, in speaking on this subject and vindicating the
use and dignity of the style of writing in which he
excelled against the loftier pretensions of professed his-
torians, says that in their productions nothing is true but
the names and dates, whereas in his everything is true but
the names and dates. If so, he has the advantage on his
side.

I will here confess, however, that I am a little pre-
judiced on the point in question ; and that the effect of
many fine speculations has been lost upon me, from an
early familiarity with the most striking passages in the
work to which I have just alluded. Thus nothing can be
more captivating than the description somewhere given by
Mr. Burke of the indissoluble connection between learning
and nobility, and of the respect universally paid by
wealth to piety and morals. But the effect of this ideal
representation has always been spoiled by my recollection

144 The English Comic Writers.

of Parson Adams sitting over his cup of ale in Sir Thomas
Booby's kitchen, Echard *0n the Contempt of the
Clergy ' is, in like manner, a very good book, and " worthy
of all acceptation :" but, somehow, an unlucky impression
of the reality of Parson Trulliber involuntarily checks the
emotions of respect to which it might otherwise give rise :
while, on the other hand, the lecture which Lady Booby
reads to Lawyer Scout on the immediate expulsion of
Joseph and Fanny from the parish, casts no very favour-
able light on the flattering accounts of our practical juris-
prudence which are to be found in * Blackstone ' or ' De
Lolme.' The most moral writers, after all, are those who
do not pretend to inculcate any moral. The professed
moralist almost unavoidably degenerates into the partisan
of a system ; and the philosopher is too apt to warp the
evidence to his own purpose. But the painter of manners
gives the facts of human nature, and leaves us to draw the
inference : if we are not able to do this, or do it ill, at
least it is our own fault.

The flrst^rate writers in this class of course are few ;
but those few we may reckon among the greatest ornaments
and best benefactors of our kind. There is a certain set
of them who, as it were, take their rank by the side of
reality, and are appealed to as evidence on all questions
concerning human nature. The principal of these are
Cervantes and Le Sage, who may be considered as having
been naturalised among ourselves ; and, of native English
growth, Fielding, Smollett, Eichardson, and Sterne.* As
this is a department of criticism which deserves more
attention than has been usually bestowed upon it, I shall
here venture to recur (not from choice, but necessity) to
what I have said upon it in a well-known periodical

* It is not to be forgotten that the author of 'Eobinson Crusoe'
was also an Englishman. His other works, such as the ' Life of
Colonel Jack/ &c., are of the same cast, and leave an impression on
the mind more like that of things than words.

Tlie English Novelists. 145

publication ; and endeavour to contribute my mite towards
settling the standard of excellence, both as to degree and
kind; in these several writers.

I shall begin with the history of the renowned Don
Quixote de la Mancha, who presents something more
stately, more romantic, and at the same time more real to
the imagination than any other hero upon record. His
lineaments, his accoutrements, his pasteboard vizor, are
familiar to us ; and Mambrino's helmet still glitters in the
sun ! We not only feel the greatest love and veneration
for the knight himself, but a certain respect for all those
connected with him, the curate and Master Nicolas the
barber, Sancho and Dapple, and even for Eosinante's
leanness and his errors. Perhaps there is no work which
combines so much whimsical invention with such an air of
truth. Its popularity is almost unequalled ; and yet its
merits have not been sufficiently understood. The story
is the least part of them ; though the blunders of Sancho,
and the unlucky adventures of his master, are what
naturally catch the attention of the majority of readers.
The pathos and dignity of the sentiments are often dis-
guised under the ludicronsness of the subject, and provoke
laughter when they might well draw tears. The character
of Don Quixote himself is one of the most perfect dis-
interestedness. He is an enthusiast of the most amiable
kind : of a nature equally open, gentle, and generous : a
lover of truth and justice ; and one who had brooded over
the ^e dreams of chivalry and romance, till they had
robbed him of himself, and cheated his brain into a
belief of their reality. There cannot be a greater mistake
than to consider ' Don Quixote ' as a merely satirical work,
or as a vulgar attempt to explode "the long-forgotten
order of chivalry." There could be no need to explode
what no longer existed. Besides, Cervantes himself was
a man of the most sanguine and enthusiastic temperament ;
and even through the crazed and battered figure of the

L

146 The English Comic Writers.

knight, the spirit of cHvalry shines out with undiminished
lustre ; as if the author had half designed to revive the
example of past ages, and once more " witch the world
with noble horsemanship." Oh 1 if ever the mouldering
flame of Spanish liberty is destined to break forth,
wrapping the tyrant and the tyranny in one consuming
blaze, that the spark of generous sentiment and romantic
enterprise, from which it must be kindled, has not been
quite extinguished, will perhaps be owing to thee,
Cervantes, and to thy ' Don Quixote !'

The character of Sancho is not more admirable in
itself, than as a relief to that of the knight. The contrast
is as picturesque and striking as that between the figures
of Eosinante and Dapple. Never was there so complete a
partie guarree : — they answer to one another at all points.
Nothing need surpass the truth of physiognomy in the
description of the master and man, both as to body and
mind ; the one lean and tall, the other round and short ;
the one heroical and courteous, the other selfish and
servile ; the one fall of high-flown fancies, the other a bag
of proverbs; the one always starting some romantic
scheme, the other tr3dng to keep to the safe side of custom
and tradition. The gradual ascendancy, however, obtained
by Don Quixote over Sancho, is as finely managed as it is
characteristic. Credulity and a love of the marvellous are
as natural to ignorance, as selfishness and cunning.
Sancho by degrees becomes a kind of lay-brother of the
order ; acquires a taste for adventures in his own way, and
is made all but an entire convert, by the discovery of the
hundred crowns in one of his most comfortless journeys.
Towards the end, his regret at being forced to give up the
pursuit of knight-errantry almost equals his master's;
and he seizes the proposed of Don Quixote for them to
turn shepherds with the greatest avidity — still applying it
in his own fashion; for while the Don is ingeniously
torturing the names of his humble acquaintance into

The English Novelists, 147

classical terminations, and contriving scenes of gallantry
and song, Sancho exclaims, " Oh, what delicate wooden
spoons shall I carve! what crnmbs and cream shall I
devour I" — ^forgetting, in his milk and fruits, the pullets
and geese at Camacho's wedding.

This intuitive perception of the hidden analogies of
things, or, as it may be called, this instinct of the imagination,
is, perhaps, what stamps the character of genius on the
productions of art more than any other circumstance : for
it works imconsciously like nature, and receives its im-
pressions from a kind of inspiration. There is as much of
this indistinct keeping and involuntary unity of purpose
in Cervantes, as in any author whatever. Something of
the same unsettled, rambling humour extends itself to all
the subordinate parts and characters of the work. Thus
we find the curate confidentially informing Don Quixote,
that if he could get the ear of the government, he has
something of considerable importance to propose for the
good of the state ; and our adventurer afterwards (in the
course of his peregrinations) meets with a young gentle-
man who is a candidate for poetical honours, with a mad
lover, a forsaken damsel, a Mahometan lady converted
to the Christian faith, &c. — all delineated with the same
truth, wildness, and delicacy of fancy. The whole work
breathes that air of romance, that aspiration after imagin-
ary good, that indescribable longing after something more
than we possess, that in all places and in all conditions of

life,

" still prompts the eternal sigh.

For which we wish to live, or dare to die !"

The leading characters in * Don Quixote ' are strictly indi-
viduals ; that is, they do not so much belong to, as form
a class by themselves. In other words, the actions and
manners of the chief dramatis personam do not arise out of
the actions and manners of those around them, or the
situation of life in which they are placed, but out of the

L 2

148 The English Comic Writers.

peculiar diBpositions of the persons themselyes, operated
upon by certain impulses of caprice and accident. Yet
these -impulses are so true to nature, and their operation
BO exactly described, that we not only recognize the fidelity
of the representation, but recognize it with all the advan-
tages of novelty superadded. They are in the best sense
originals^ namely, in the sense in which nature has her
originals. They are unlike anything we have seen before
— may be said to be purely ideal, and yet identify them-
selves more readily with our imagination, and are retained
more strongly in memory, than perhaps any others : they
are never lost in the crowd. One test of the truth of this
ideal painting is the number of allusions which ' Don
Quixote ' has furnished to the whole of civilised Europe :
that is to say, of appropriate cases and striking illustra-
tions of the universal principles of our nature. The
detached incidents and occasional descriptions of human
life are more familiar and obvious ; so that we have nearly
the same insight here given us into the characters of inn-
keepers, barmaids, ostlers, and puppet-show men, that we
have in Fielding. There is a much greater mixture, how-
ever, of the pathetic and sentimental with the quaint and
humorous, than there ever is in Fielding. I might
instance the story of the countryman whom Don Quixote
and Sancho met in their doubtful search after Dulcinea,
driving his mules to plough at break of day, and " singing
the ancient ballad of Eonscevalles !" The episodes
which are frequently introduced are excellent, but have,
upon the whole, been overrated. They derive their interest
from their connexion with the main story. We are so
pleased with that, that we are disposed to receive pleasure
from everything else. Compared, for instance, with the
serious tales of Boccaccio, they are slight and somewhat
superficial. That of Marcella the fair shepherdess is, I
think, the best. I shall only add, that * Don Quixote ' was,
at the time it was published, an entirely original work in

The Eiiglish Novelists. 149

its kind, and that the author claims the highest honour
which can belong to one, that of being the inventor of a
new style of writing. 1 have never read his ' G^atea,'
nor his 'Loves of Persiles and Sigismunda,* though I.
have often meant to do it, and I hope to do so yet. Perhaps
there is a reason lurking at the bottom of this dilatoriness.
I am quite sure the reading of these works could not make
me think higher of the author of ' Don Quixote,' and it
might, for a moment or two, make me think less.*

There is another Spanish novel, ' Gusman D'Alfarache,'
nearly of the same age as ' Don Quixote,' and of great
genius, though it can hardly be ranked as a novel or a
work of imagination. It is a series of strange, unconnected
adventures, rather drily told, but accompanied by the most
severe and sarcastic commentary. The satire, the wit, the
eloquence and reasoning, are of the most potent kind : but
they are didactic rather than dramatic. They would suit
a homily or a pasquinade as well [as] or better than a ro-
mance. Still there are in this extraordinary book occasional
sketches of character and humorous descriptions, to which
it would be difacult to produce anything superior. This
work, which is hardly known in this country except by
name, has the credit without any reason of being the
original of ' Gil Bias.' There is one incident the same,
that of the unsavoury ragout, which is served up for
supper at the inn. In all other respects these two works
are the very reverse of each other, both in their excellences
and defects. * Lazarillo de Tormes ' has been more read
than the ' Spanish Eogue,' and is a work more readable,
on this account among others, that it is contained in a
duodecimo instead of a folio volume. This, however, is
long enough, considering that it treats of only one subject,
that of eating, or rather the possibility of living without

* My friend Mr. Henry Hath pointed out to me that the Second
Part of * Don Quixote * was produced (or accelerated, at all events)
4>y the publication of a veiy inferior sequel by another "writer. — Ed#

150 The English Comic Writer 8.

eating. Famine is bere firamed into an art, and feasting is
banished far hence. The hero's time and thoughts are
taken np in a thousand shifts to procure a dinner ; and
that failing, in tampering with his stomach till supper
time, when being forced to go supperless to bed, he com>
forts himself with the hopes of a breakfast the next
morning, of which being again disappointed, he reserves
his appetite for a luncheon, and then has to stave it off
again by some meagre excuse or other till dinner ; and so
on, by a perpetual adjournment of this necessary process,
through the four and twenty hours round. The quantity
of food proper to keep body and soul together is reduced
to a minimum; and the most uninviting morsels with
which] Lazarillo meets once a week as a God's-send, are
pampered into the most sumptuous fare by a long course
of inanition. The scene of this novel could be laid
nowhere so properly as in Spain, that land of priestcraft
and poverty, where hunger seems to be the ruling passion,
and starving the order of the day.

*Gil Bias' has, next to *Don Quixote,' been more
generally read and admired than any other novel ; and in
one sense, deservedly so : for it is at the head of its class,
though that class is very different from, and I should say
inferior to the other. There is little individual character
in ' Gil Bias.' The author is a describer of manners, and
not of character. He does not take the elements of human
nature, and work them up into new combinations (which
is the excellence of ' Don Quixote ') ; nor trace the
peculiar and shifting shades of folly and knavery as they
are to be found in real life (like Fielding) : but he takes
off, as it were, the general, habitual impression which
circumstances make on certain conditions of life, and
moulds aU his characters accordingly. All the persons
whom he introduces carry about with them the badge of
their profession; and you see little more of them than
their costume. He describes men as belonging to distinct

The English Novelists, 151

classes in society ; not as they are in themselves, or with
the indiyidual differences which are always to be dis-
covered in nature. His hero, in particular, has no cha-
racter but that of the successive circumstances in which
he is placed. His priests are only described as priests :
his valets, his players, his women, his courtiers and his
sharpers, are all alike. Nothing can well exceed the
monotony of the work in this respect, at the same time
that nothing can exceed the truth and precision with
which the general manners of these different characters
are preserved, nor the felicity of the particular traits by
which their common foibles are brought out. Thus the
Archbishop of Granada will remain an everlasting me-
mento of the weakness of hiunan vanity ; and the account
of Gil Bias' legacy, of the uncertainty of human expecta-
tions. This novel is also deficient in the fable as well as in
the characters. It is not a regularly constructed story, but
a series of amusing adventures told with equal gaiety and
good sense, and in the most graceful style imaginable.

It has been usual to class our own great novelists as
imitators of one or other of these two writers. Fielding,
no doubt, is more like ' Don Quixote ' than ' Gil Bias ;'
Smollett is more like ' Gil Bias ' than ' Don Quixote ;' but
there is not much resemblance in either case. Sterne's
' Tristram Shandy ' is a more direct instance of imitation ;
Bichardson can scarcely be called an imitator of any one ;
or if he is, it is of the sentimental refinement of Marivaux,
or of the verbose gallantry of the writers of the seven-
teenth century.

There is very little to warrant the common idea that
Fielding was an imitator of Cervantes, except his own
declaration of such an intention in the title-page of
' Joseph Andrews,' the romantic turn of the character of
Parson Adams (the only romantic character in his works),
and the proverbial humour of Partridge, which is kept up
only for a few pages. Fielding's novels are, in general,

152 The English Comic Writers.

tboronghly His own ; and they are thoroughly English.
What they are most remarkable for, is neither sentiment,
nor imagination, nor wit, nor even himiour, though there
is an immense deal of this last quality: but profound

; knowledge of human nature, at least of English nature,
and masterly pictures of the characters of men as he saw
them existing. This quality distinguishes all his works,

\ and is shown almost equally in all of them. As a painter
of real life, he was equal to Hogarth : as a mere observer

. of human nature, he was little inferior to Shakspeare,
though without any of the genius and poetical qualities of
his mind. His humour is less rich and laughable than
Smollett's ; his wit as often misses as hits ; he has none
of the fine pathos of Bichardson or Sterne ; but he has
brought together a g reater v ariety of characters in com-
mon life, marked witn more distinct j)eculiarities and
without an atom of caricature than any other noveTwriter
whatever. The extreme subtlety of observation on the
springs of human conduct in ordinary characters, is only
equalled by the ingenuity of contrivance in bringing those
springs into play, in such a manner as to lay open their
smallest irregularity. The detection is always complete,
and made with the certainty and skill of a philosophical
experiment, and the obviousness and familiarity of a casual
observation. The truth of the imitation is indeed so
great, that it has been argued that Fielding must have had
his materials ready-made to his hands, and was merely a
transcriber of local manners and individual habits. For
this conjecture, however, there seems to be no foundation.
His representations, it is true, are local and individual ;
but they are not the less profound and conclusive. "The
feeling of the general principles of human nature, operating
in pi^rticular circumstances, is always intense, and upper-
most in his mind ; and he makes use of incident and
situation only to bring out character.

It is scarcely necessary to give any illustrations. Tom

The English Novelists. 153

Jones is full of them. There is the account, for example,
of the gratitude of the elder Blifil to his brother, for
assisting him to obtain the fortune of Miss Bridget
Alworthy by marriage ; and of the gratitude of the poor
in his neighbourhood to Alworthy himself, who had done
so much good in the country that he had made every ono
in it his enemy. There is the account of the Latin
dialogues between Partridge and his maid, of the assault
made on him during one of these by Mrs. Partridge, and
the severe bruises he patiently received on that occasion,
after which the parish of Little Baddington rung with the
story that the schoolmaster had killed his wife. There
is the exquisite keeping in the character of Blifil, and the
want of it in that of Jones. There is the gradation in
the lovers of Molly Seagrim; the philosopher Square
succeeding to Tom Jones, who again finds that he himself
had succeeded to the accomplished Will Barnes, who had
the first possession of her person, and had still possession
of her heart, Jones being only the instrument of her
vanity, as Square was of her interest. Then there is
the discreet honesty of Black George, the learning of
Thwackum and Square, and the profundity of Squire
Western, who considered it as a physical impossibility
that his daughter should fall in love with Tom Jones.
We have also that gentleman's disputes with his sister,
and the inimitable appeal of that lady to her niece. — " I
was never so handsome as you, Sophy: yet I had some-
thing of you formerly. I was called the cruel Parthenissa.
Kingdoms and states, as Tully Cicero says, undergo
alteration, and so must the human form !" The adventure
of the same lady with the highwayman, who robbed her
of her jewels, while he complimented her beauty, ought
not to be passed over, nor that of Sophia and her muff,
nor the reserved coquetry of her cousin Fitzpatriok, nor
the description of Lady Bellaston, nor the modest over-
tures of the pretty widow Himt, nor the indiscreet

154 Tlie English Comic Writers.

babblings of Mrs. Honour. The moral of this book has
boon objected to without much reason; but a more
serious objection has been made to the want of refinement
and elegance in two principal characters. We never feel
this objection, indeed, while we are reading the book : but
at other times, we have something like a lurking suspicion
that Jones was but an awkward fellow, and Sophia a
pretty simpleton. I do not know how te account for this
effect, unless it is that Fielding's constantly assuring us
of the beauty of his hero, and the good sense of his
heroine, at last produces a distrust of both. The story
of ' Tom Jones' is allowed to be unrivalled : and it is this
circumstance, together with the vast variety of characters,
that has given the ' History of a Foundling ' so decided a
preference over Fielding's other novels. The characters
themselves, both in ' Amelia' and ' Joseph Andrews,' are
quite equal to any of those in ' Tom Jones.' The accoimt
of Miss Matthews and Ensign Hibbert, in the former of
these ; the way in which that lady reconciles herself to
the death of her father ; the inflexible Colonel Bath ; the
insipid Mrs. James, the complaisant Colonel Trent, the
demure, sly, intriguing, equivocal Mrs. Bennet, the lord
who is her seducer, and who attempts afterwards to seduce
Amelia by the same mechanical process of a concert-
ticket, a book, and the disguise of a great-coat ; his little,
fat, short-nosed, red-faced, good-humoured accomplice,
the keeper of the lodging-house who, having no pre-
tensions to gallantry herself, has a disinterested delight
in forwarding the intrigues and pleasures of others (to
say nothing of honest Atkinson, the story of the minia-
ture picture of Amelia, and the hashed mutton, which are
in a different style), are mastei>pieces of description. The
whole scene at the lodging-house, the masquerade, &c., in
' Amelia,' are equal in interest to the parallel scenes in ^ Tom
Jones,' and even more refined in the knowledge of cha-
racter. For instance, Mrs. Bennet is superior to Mrs.

I

The English Novdids. 155

I Fitzpatrick in her own way. The uncertainty in which
the event of her interview with her former sedncer is left,
is admirable. Fielding was a master of what may be
called the double entendre of character, and surprises you
no less by what he leaves in the dark (hardly known to
the persons themselves), than by the unexpected dis-
coveries he makes of the real traits and circumstances in
a character with which, till then, you find you were un>
acquainted. There is nothing at all heroic, however, in
the usual style of his delineations. He does not draw
lofty characters or strong passions ; all his persons are of
the ordinary stature as to intellect, and possess littlo
elevation of fancy or energy of purpose. Perhaps, after
all. Parson Adams is his finest character. It is equally
true to nature, and moi^ ideal Jhan any of the oihere»
Its unsuspectiiig simplicity makes it not only more
amiable, but doubly amusing, by gratifying the jsense
of_supei:ior sagacity in the reader. Our laughing at him
does not once lessen our respect for him. His declaring
that he would willingly walk ten miles to fetch his
sermon on vanity, merely to convince Wilson of his
thorough contempt of this vice, and his consoling himself
for the loss of his ' JSschylus ' by suddenly recollecting
that he could not read it if he had it, because it is dark,
are among the finest touches of naweU. The night-
adventures at Lady Booby's with Beau Didapper and the
amiable Slipslop are the most ludicrous; and that with
the huntsman, who draws off the hounds from the poor
Parson, because they would be spoiled by following
vermin^ the most profound. Fielding did not often repeat
himself; but Dr. Harrison, in ' Amelia,' may be considered
as a variation of the character of Adams: so also is
Goldsmith's < Vicar of Wakefield ;' and the latter part
of that work, which sets out so delightfully, an almost
entire plagiarism from Wilson's account of himself, and
Adams's domestic history.

156 The English Comic Writers.

Smollett's first noyel, ' Eoderick Bandom,' which is also
his best, appeared abont the same time as Fielding's ' Tom
Jones ;* and yet it has a mnch more modem air with it :
but this may be accomited for from the circumstance that
Smollett was quite a young man at the time, whereas
Fielding's manner must have been formed long before.
The style of 'Eoderick Bandom' is more easy and
flowing than that of 'Tom Jones;' the incidents follow
one another more rapidly (though, it must be confessed,
they never come in such a throng, or are brought out with
the same dramatic effect) ; the humour is broader and as
effectual ; and there is very nearly, if not quite, an equal
interest excited by the story. What then is it that gives
the superiority to Fielding? It is the superior insight
\ into the springs of human character, and the constant
^development of that character through every change of
Circumstance. Smolletf s humour often arises from the
situation of the persons, or the peculiarity of their ex-
ternal appearance, as from Boderick Bandom's carroty
locks, which hung down over his shoulders like a pound
of candles, or Strap's ignorance of London, and the
blunders that follow from it. There is a tone of vulgarity
about all his productions. The incidents frequently
resemble detached anecdotes taken from a newspaper or
magazine ; and, like those in ' Gil Bias,' might happen to
a hundred other characters. He exhibits the ridiculous
acQi^ents and reve^^bes to which human life is liable, not
" the sj uff" of which it is composed. He seldom probes to
the quick, or penetrates beyond the surface; and there-
fore he leaves no stings in the minds of his readers, and
in this respect is for less interesting than Fielding. His
novels always enliven, and never tire us : we take them up
with pleasure, and lay them down without any strong
feeling of regret. We look on and laugh, as spectators
of a highly amusing scene, without closing in with the
combatants, or being made parties in the event. We read

\

\

\
\

\

Ths English Novelists. 157

* Eoderick Kandom ' as an entertaining story ; for the par- 1
ticnlar accidents and modes of life which it describes -
have ceased to exist : but ,we regard ' Tom Jones ' as a '
r^ his tory, because the author never stops short of those \
esseniiial principles which lie at the bottom of all our
actions, and in which we feel an immediate interest — irUus^
ei in cute, Smollett excels most as the lively caricslturist^
Fielding as the exact painter and profound metaphysician.
I am far irom maintaining that this account applies
uniformly to the productions of these two writers ; but I
think that, as far as they essentially differ, what I have
stated is the general distinction between them. 'Eod(»ick
Bandom ' is the purest of Smollett's novels : I moan in
point of style and description. Most of the incidents and\ ^^
characters are supposed to have been taken from they '
events of his own life, and are therefore truer to nature/
There is a rude conception of generosity in some of his
characters, of which Fielding seems to have been in-
capable, his amiable persons being merely good-natured.
It is owing to this that Strap is superior to Partridge, as
there is a heartiness and warmth of feeling in some of the
scenes between Lieutenant Bowling and his nephew, which
is beyond Fielding's power of impassioned writing. The
whole of the scene on ship-board is a most admirable and
striking picture, and, I imagine, very little if at all
exaggerated, though the interest it excites is of a very un-
pleasant kind, because the irritation and resistance to
petty oppression can be of no avail. The picture of the
little profligate French friar, who was Eoderick's travelling
companion, and of whom he always kept to the windward,
is one of Smollett's most masterly sketches. ' Peregrine
Pickle' is no great favourite of mine, and *Launcelot
Greaves ' was not worthy of the genius of the author,

'Humphry Clinker' and *Oount Fathom' are both
equally admirable in their way. Perhaps the former is
the most pleasant gossiping novel that ever was written: ^:y

158 The English Comic Writers,

that which gives the most pleasure with the least effort
the reader. It is quite as amusing as going the y
could haye been ; and we haye just as good an idy
happened on the road, as if we had been of
Humphry Clinker himself is exquisite ; and his i
Winifred Jenkins, not much behind him.
BraBAUe, though not altogether original, is e:
supported, and seems to haye been the prototy^
Anthony Absolute in the ' Eiyals.' But Lismaha^
£ower of the flock. His tenaciousness in argument i
80 delightful as the relaxation of his logical severity, i^
he finds his fortune mellowing in the wintry smil'
Mrs. Tabitha Bramble. This is the best preservr
most severe of all Smolletf s characters. The resemb.
to ' Don Quixote ' is only just enough to make it interests
to the critical reader, without giving offence to anybody
else. The indecency and filth in this novel are what
.^ must be allowed to all Smollett's writings. The subject
and characters in 'Count Fathom' are, in general, ex-
ceedingly disgusting: the story is also spun out to a
degree of tediousness in the serious and sentimental parts ;
but there is more power of writing occasionally shown in
it than jn any of his works. I need only refer to the fine
and bitter irony of the Count's address to the country of
his ancestors on his landing in England; to the robber
scene in the forest, which has never been surpassed ; to
the Parisian swindler who personates a raw English
country squire (Western is tame in the comparison) ; and
to the story of the seduction in the west of England. It
would be difficult to point out, in any author, passages
written with more force and mastery than these.

It is not a very difficult undertc^ng to class Fielding
or Smollett — ^the one as an observer .of the characters of
human life, the otiier as a describer of its^various eccen-
■'tricities. But it is by no means so easy to ^pose of
J[tichardson, who was neither an observer of the one, nor

The English Novelists. 159

a describer of the other; but who seemed to spin his
materials entirely ont of his own brain, as if there had
been nothing existing in the world beyond the little room
in which he sat writing. There is an artificial reality
about his works, which is nowhere else to be met with.
They haye the romantic air of a pure fiction, with the
literal minuteness of a common diary. The author had.,
the strongest matter-of-fact imagination that ever existed, j
and wrote the oddest mixture of poetry and prose. He ,
does not appear to have taken advantage of anything in /
actual nature, from one end of his works to the other ; j
and yet, throughout all his works, voluminous as they are
— and this, to be sure, is one reason why they are so — ^he
sets about describing every object and transaction as if ,
the whole had been given in on evidence by an eye-witness. ^
This kind of high finishing from imagination is an anomaly
in the history of human genius ; and certainly nothing
so fine was ever produced by the same accumulation of
minute parts. There is not the least distraction, the least
foigetfulness of the end : every circumstance is made to
telL I cannot agree that this exactness of detail produces
heaviness; on the contrary, it gives an appearance of
truth, and a positive interest to liie story ; and we listen
with the same attention as we shoidd to the particulars of
a confidential communication. I at one time used to
think some parts of ' Sir Charles Grandison ' rather trifling
and tedious, especially the long description of Miss Harriet
Byron's wedding clothes, till I was told of two young
ladies who had severally copied out the whole of that very
description for their own private gratification. After that,
I could not blame the author.

The effect of reading this work is like an increase of
kindred. You find yourself all of a sudden introduced
into the midst of a large family, with aunts and cousins
to the third and fourth generation, and grandmothers both
by the father's and mother's side ; and a very odd set of

160 The English Comic Writers.

people they are, bat people whose real existence and
personal identity yon can no more dispute than your own
senses, for you see and hear all that they do or say.
What is still more extraordinary, all this extreme elabo-
rateness in working out the story, seems to have cost the
author nothing ; for it is said that the published works are
mere abridgments. I haye heard (though this I suspect
must be a pleasant exaggeration), that * Sir Charles Grandi-
son ' was originally written in eight and twenty volumes.
Pamela is the first of Bichardson's productions, and the
very child of his brain. Taking the general idea of the
character of a modest and beautiful country girl, and of
the ordinary situation in which she is placed, he makes
out all the rest, even to the smallest circumstance, by the
mere force of a reasoning imagination. It would seem as
if a step lost would be as fatal here as in a mathematical
demonstration. The development of the character is the
most simple, and comes the nearest to nature that it can
do, without being the same thing. The interest of the
story increases with the dawn of understanding and
reflection in the heroine : her sentiments gradually ex-
pand themselves, like opening flowers. She writes better
every time, and acquires a confidence in herself, just as a
girl would do, writing such letters in such circumstances ;
and yet it is certain that no girl would write such letters in
such circumstances. What I mean is this — Eichardson's
nature is always the nature of sentiment and reflection^
not of impulse or situation. He furnishes his characters,
on every occasion, with the presence of mind of the author.
He makes them act, not as they would from the impulse of
the moment, but as they might upon reflection, and upon
a careful review of every motive and circumstance in their
situation. They regularly sit down to write letters : and
if the business of life consisted in letter-writing, and was
carried on by the x)ost (like a Spanish game at chess),
human nature would be what Eichardson represents it.

The English Novelists. 161

All actual objects and feelings are blunted and deadened
by being presented tbrough a medium which may be true
to reason, but is fiedse in nature. He confounds his own
point of view with that of the immediate actors in the
scene, and hence presents you with a conventional and
fistctitious nature, instead of that which is real. Dr. John-
son seems to have preferred this truth of reflection to the
truth of nature, when he said that there was more know-
ledge of the human heart in a page of Eichardson, than in
all Fielding. Fielding, however, saw more of the prac-
tical results, and understood the principles as well ; but
he had not the same power of speculating upon their
possible results, and combining them in certain ideal
forms of passion and imagination, which was Eichardson's
real excellence.

It must be observed, however, that it is this mutual
good understanding, and comparing of notes between the
author and the persons he describes : his infinite circum-
spection, his exact process of ratiocination and calculation,
which gives such an appearance of coldness and formality
to most of his characters — which makes prudes of his
women, and coxcombs of his men. Everything is too
conscious in his works. Everything is distinctly brought
home to the mind of the actors in the scene, which is a
fault undoubtedly ; but then it must be confessed, every-
thing is brought home in its full force to the mind of the
reader also, and we feel the same interest in the story as
if it were our own. Can anything be more beautiful or
more affecting than Pamela's reproaches to her ' lumpish
heart,' when she is sent away from her mastsr's at her
own request : its lightness, when she is sent for back : the
joy which the conviction of the sincerity of his love
diffuses in her heart, like the coming on of spring ; the
artifice of the stuff gown : the meeting with Lady Davers
after her marriage : and the trial-scene with her husband ?
Who ever remained insensible to the passion of Lady

M

162 The English Comie Writers.

Clementina, except Sir Charles Grandison himseK, who
was the object of it ? Clarissa is, however, his master-
piece, if we except Lovelace. If she is fine in herself, she
is still finer in his accomit of her. With that foil her
purity is dazzling indeed : and she who conld triumph by
her virtue and the force of her love over the regality of
Lovelace's mind, his wit, his person, his accomplishments
and his spirit, conquers all hearts. I shduld suppose that
never sympathy more deep or sincere was excited than by
the heroine of Eichardson's romance, except by the calami-
ties of real life. The links in this wonderful chain of
interest are not more finely wrought, than their whole
weight is overwhelming and irresistible. Who can forget
the exquisite gradations of her long dying scene, or the
closing of the coffin-lid, when Miss Howe comes to take
her last leave of her friend ; or the heart-breaking reflec*
tion that Clarissa makes on what was to have been her
wedding day ? Well does a certain writer exclaim —

'^ Books are a real world, both pure and good,
Bound which with tendrils strong as flesh and blood.
Our pastime and our happiness may grow \"

Eichardson's wit was unlike that of any other writer :
his humour was so too. Both were the effect of intense
activity of mind : laboured, and yet completely effectual.
I might refer to Lovelace's reception and description of
EEickman, when he calls out Death in his ear, as the name
of the person with whom Clarissa had fallen in love, and
to the scene at the glove shop. What can be more magni-
ficent than his enumeration of his companions — '* Belton,
80 pert and so pimply : Tourville, so fair and so foppish !"
&c. Li casuistry this author is quite at home ; and with a
boldness greater even than his puritanical severity, [he]
has exhausted every topic on virtue and vice. There is
another peculiarity in Eichardson not perhaps so uncom*
mon, which is his systematically preferring his most
insipid characters to his finest, though both were equally

The English Novelists. 1 G3

Ids own inyention, and he must be supposed to have
understood something of their qualities. Thus he pre-
ferred the little, selfish, affected, insignificant Miss Byron
to the Diyine Clementina, and, again, Sir Charles Grandi-
son to the nobler Lovelace. I have nothing to say in }
favour of Lovelace's morality; but Sir Charles is the,
prince of coxcombs, whose eye was never once taken from ^
his own person and his own virtues, and there is nothing
which excites so little sympathy as this excessive egotism.
It remains to speak of Sterne ; and I shall do it in few
words. There is more of mannerism and affectation in
him, and a more immediate reference to preceding authors ;
but his excellences, where he is excellent, are of the first
order. His characters are intellectual and inventive, like \ ^
Eichardson's, but totally opposite in the execution. The '
one are made out by continuity and patient repetition of
touches : the others, by glancing transitions and graceful
apposition. His style is equally different from Eichard-
son's : it is at times the most rapid, the most happy, the
most idiomatic of any that is to be found. It is the pure
essence of- English conversational style. His works con- ■
sist only of morceaux — of brilliant passages. I wonder '<
that Goldsmith, who ought to have known better, should
caU him "a dull fellow." His wit is poignant, though
artificial ; and his characters (though the groundwork of
some of them had been laid before) have yet invaluable
original differences ; and the spirit of the execution, the
masternstrokes constantly thrown into them, are not to be
surpassed. It is sufficient to name them : — Yorick, Dr.
Slop, Mr. Shandy, My Uncle Toby, Trim, Susanna, and
the Widow Wadman. In these he has contrived to
oppose with equal felicity and originality two characters,
one of pure intellect, and the other of pure good nature,
in My Father and My Uncle Toby. There appears to
have been in Sterne a vein of dry, sarcastic humour, and
of extreme tenderness of feeling ; the latter sometimes

H 2

164 The English Comic Writers.

carried to affisctation, as in the tale of ' Maria ' and the
apostrophe to the recording angel: bat at other tunes
pure and without blemish. The story of Le Fevre is
perhaps the finest in the English language. My Father's
restlessness, both of body and mind, is inimitable. It is
the model from which all those despicable performances
against modem philosophy ought to have been copied, if
their authors had known anything of the subject they
were wntmg about. My Unde Toby is one of the finest
compliments ever paid to human nature. He is the most
unoffending of God's creatures ; or, as the French express
it, un id petit hon homme I Of his bowling-green, his
sieges, and his amours, who would say or think anything
amiss?

It Is remarkable that our four^st novel writers belong
nearly to the same age. We also owe to the same period
(the reign of George II.) the inimitable Hogarth, and
some of our best writers of the middle style of comedy.
If I were called upon to account for this coincidence, I
should waive the consideration of more general causes,
and ascribe it at ouce to the establishment of the Pro-
testant ascendancy, and the succession of the House of
Hanover. These great events appear to have given a
more popular turn to our literature and genius, as well as
to our government. It was found high time that the
people 'should be represented in books as well as in
Parliament. They wished to see some account of them-
selves in what they read ; and not to be confined always
to the vices, the miseries, and frivolities of the great.
Our domestic tragedy, and our earliest periodical works,
appeared a little before the same period. In despotic
countries, human nature is not of sufiicient importance to
be studied or described. The canaille are objects rather
of disgust than curiosity ; and there are no middle classes.
The works of Kacine and Moliere are either imitations of
the verbiage of the court, before which they were repre-

The English Novelists. 165

sented, or fanciful caricatures of the manners of the
lowest of the people. But in the period of our history in
question, a security of person and property, and a freedom
of opinion, had been established, which made every man
feel of some consequence to himself, and appear an object
of some curiosity to his neighbours ; our manners became
more domesticated ; there was a general spirit of sturdi-
ness and independence, which made the English character
more truly English than perhaps at any other period —
that is, more tenacious of its own opinions and purposes.
The whole surface of society appeared cut out into square
enclosures and sharp angles, which extended to the dresses
of the time, their gravel walks and clipped hedges. Each
individual had a certain ground-plot of his own to cultivate
his particular humours in, and let them shoot out at
pleasure ; and a most plentiful crop they have produced
accordingly. The reign of George II. was, in a word,
the age of hobby-horses; but since that period things
have taken a different turn.

His present Majesty * (God save the mark !) during
almost the whole of his reign has been constantly mounted
on a great war-horse, and has fairly driven all competitors
out of the field. Instead of minding our own affairs, or
laughing at each other, the eyes of all his faithful subjects
have been fixed on the career of the sovereign, and all
hearts anxious for the safety of his person and government,
Our pens and our swords have been alike drawn in their
defence; and the returns of killed and wounded, the
manufacture of newspapers and parliamentary speeches,
have exceeded all former example. If we have had little
of the blessings of peace, we have had enough of the
glories and calamities of war. His Majesty has indeed
contrived to keep alive the greatest public interest ever
known, by his determined manner of riding his hobby for
half a century together, with the aristocracy, the demo-

* George III.— Ed.

166 The English Comic Writers.

cracy, the clergy, the landed and monied interest, and the
rabble, in full cry after him; and at the end of his
career, most happily and unexpectedly succeeded, amidst
empires lost and won, kingdoms oyertomed and created,
and the destruction of an incredible number of lives, in
restoring the divine right of Icings^ and thus preventing any
future abuse of the example which seated his family on
the throne 1

It is not to be wondered at, if amidst the tumult of
events crowded into this period, our literature has partaken
of the disorder of the time : if our prose has run mad, and
our poetry grown childish. Among those persons who
" have kept the even tenor of their way," the author of
'Evelina,' 'Cecilia,' and 'Camilla,' must be aUowed to
hold a distinguished place.* Mrs. Eaddiffe's " enchant-
ments drear," and mouldering castles, derived part of their
interest, no doubt, from the supposed tottering state of all
old structures at the time ; and Mrs. Inchbald's ' Nature
and Art ' would scarcely have had the same popularity,
but that it fell in (as to its two main characters) with the
prevailing prejudice of the moment, that judges and
bishops were not invariably pure abstractions of justice
and piety. Miss Edgeworth's 'Tales' again (with the
exception of ' Castle Back-rent,' which is a genuine, un-
sophisticated, national portrait) are a kind of pedantic,
pragmatical common sense, tinctured with the pertness
and pretensions of the paradoxes tp which they are so self-
complacently opposed. Madame D'Arblay is, on the
contrary, quite of the old school, a mere common observer
of manners, and also a very woman. It is this last cir-
cumstance which forms the peculiarity of her writings,

* The *Fool of Quality' [by Henry Brooke, reprinted of late
years], ' David Simple,' and * Sidney Biddolph/ written about the
middle of the last century, belong to the ancient regime of novel-
-writing. Of the * Vicar of Wakefield ' I have attempted a character
elsewhere.

The English Novelists. 167

and distinguishes them from those masterpieces which I
haye before mentioned. She is a quick, lively, and accu-
rate observer of persons and things; but she always looks
at them with a consciousness of her sex, and in that point
of view in which it is the particular business and interest
of women to observe them. There is little in her works
of passion or character, or even manners, in the most
extended sense of the word, as implying the sum-total of
our habits and pursuits; her forte is in describing the
absurdities and affectations of external behaviour, or the
manners of people in company. Her characters, which are
ingenious caricatures, are, no doubt, distinctly marked,
and well kept up ; but they are slightly shaded, and
exceedingly uniform. Her heroes and heroines, almost all
of them, depend upon the stock of a single phrase or senti-
ment, and have certain mottoes or devices by which they
may always be known. They form such characters as
people might be supposed to assume for a night at a mas-
querade. She presents, not the whole-length figure, nor
even the face, but some prominent feature. In one of her
novels, for example, a lady appears regularly every ten
pages, to get a lesson in music for nothing. She never
appears for any other purpose ; this is all you know of
her ; and in this the whole wit and humour of the character
consist Meadows is the same, who has always the cue of
being tired, without any other idea. It has been said of
Shakspeare, that you may always assign his speeches to
the proper characters; and you may infallibly do the
same thing with Madame D'Arblay's, for they always say
the same thing. The Branghtons are the best. Mr.
Smith is an exquisite city portrait. ' Evelina ' is also her
best novel, because it is the shortest ; that is, it has all
the liveliness in the sketches of character, and smartness
of comic dialogue and repartee, without the tediousness of
the story, and endless affectation of sentiment which dis-
figures the others.

168 Tlie English Comic Writers.

Women, in general, have a quicker perception of any
oddity or singularity of character than men, and are more
alive to every absurdity which arises from a violation of
the rules of society, or a deviation from established custom.
This partly arises from the restraints in their own be>
haviour, which turn their attention constantly on the
subject, and partly from other causes. The surface of
their minds, like that of their bodies, seems of a finer
texture than ours — ^more soft, and susceptible of immediate
impulses. They have less muscvlar strength, less power
of continued voluntary attention — of reason, passion, and
imagination; but they are more easily impressed with
whatever appeals to their senses or habitual prejudices.
The intuitive perception of their minds is less disturbed
by any abstruse reasonings on causes or consequences.
They learn the idiom of character and manners, as they
acquire that of language, by rote without troubling them-
selves about the principles. Their observation is not the
less accurate on that account, as far as it goes ; for it has
been well said, that " there is nothing so true as habit."

There is little other power in Miss Bumey's novels,
than that of immediate observation : her characters,
whether of refinement or vulgarity, are equally superficial
and confined. The whole is a question of form, whether
that form is adhered to or infringed upon. It is this
circumstance which takes away dignity and interest from
her story and sentiments, and makes the one so teazing
and tedious, and the other so insipid. The difficulties in
which she involves her heroines are too much *' Female
Difficulties ;*' they are difficulties created out of nothing.
The author appears to have no other idea of refinement
than that it is the reverse of vulgarity ; but the reverse of
vulgarity is fastidiousness and afiEectation. There is a
true and a false delicacy. Because a vulgar country Miss
would answer " yes " to a proposal of marriage in the first
page, Madame D'Arblay makes it a proof of an excess of

The English Novelists. 169

refinement, and an indispensable point of etiqnette in her
yonng ladies, to postpone the answer to the end of five
Yolmues, without the smallest reason for their doing so,
and with every reason to the contrary. The reader is led
every moment to expect a denouement, and is as often dis-
appointed on some trifiiag pretext. The whole artifice of
her fable consists in coming to no conclusion. Her
ladies " stand so upon the order of their going," that they
do not go at all. They will not abate an ace of their
punctilio in any circumstances, or on any emergency.
They would consider it as quite indecorous to run down
stairs though the house were in flames, or to move an inch
off the pavement though a scaffolding was falling. . She
has formed to herself an abstract idea of perfection in
common behaviour, which is quite as romantic and imprac-
ticable as any other idea of the sort : and the consequence-
has naturally been, that she makes her heroines commit
the greatest improprieties and absurdities in order to avoid
the smallest. In opposition to a maxim in philosophy,
they constantly act from the weakest motive, or rather
from pure conteadiction. The whole tissue of the fable is,
in general, more wild and chimerical than anything in
*Don Quixote,' without the poetical truth or elevation.
Madame D*Arblay has woven a web of difficulties for her
heroines, something like the green silken threads in which
the shepherdesses entangled the steed of Cervantes' hero,
who swore, in his fine enthusiastic way, that he would
sooner cut his passage to another world than disturb the
least of those beautiful meshes. To mention the most
painful instance — the Wanderer, in her last novel, raises
obstacles, lighter than " the gossamer that idles in the
wanton summer air," into insurmountable barriers ; and
trifles with those that arise out of common sense, reason
and necessity. Her conduct is not to be accounted for
directly out of the circumstances in which she is placed,
but out of some factitious and misplaced refinement on

170 The English Comic Writers.

ihem. It is a perpetual game at cross-purposes. There
being a plain and strong motive why she should pursue
•any course of action, is a sufficient reason for her to avoid
it ; and the perversity of her conduct is in proportion to
its levity — as the lightness of the feather baffles the force
of the impulse that is given to it, and the slightest breath
of air turns it back on the hand from which it is thrown.
We can hardly consider this as the perfection of the
female character.

I must say I like Mrs. Eadcliffe's romances better, and
think of them oftener ; and even when I do not, part of
the impression with which I survey the fall-orbed moon
shining in the blue expanse of heaven, or hear the wind
sighing through autumnal leaves, or walk under the echo-
ing archways of a Grothic ruin, is owing to a repeated
perusal of l^e ' Bomance of the Forest ' and the ' Mysteries
of TJdolpho.' Her descriptions of scenery, indeed, are
vague and wordy to the last degree ; they are neither like
Salvator nor Claude, nor nature nor art ; and she dwells
on the effects of moonlight till we are sometimes weary of
them : her characters are insipid, the shadows of a shade,
continued on, under different names, through all her
novels : her story comes to nothing. But in harrowing up
the soul with imaginary horrors, and making the flesh
creep, and the nerves thrill, with fond hopes and fears,
she is unrivalled among her fair countrywomen. Her
great power lies in describing the indeiinable, and em-
bodying a phantom. She makes her readers twice
children, and from the dim and shadowy veil which she
draws ovei' the objects of her fancy, forces us to believe
all that is strange, and next to impossible, of their myste-
rious agency, whether it is the sound of the lover's lute
borne o'er the distant waters along the winding shores of
Provence, recalling with its magic breath some long-lost
£*iendship or some hopeless love ; or the full choir of the
cloistered monks chaunting their midnight orgies, or the

The English Novelists. 171

lonely voice of an unhappy sister in her pensive cell, like
angels' wliispered music; or the deep sigh that steals
from a dungeon on the startled ear ; or the dim apparition
of ghastly features ; or the face of an assassin hid beneath
a monk's cowl ; or the robber gliding through the twilight
gloom of the forest. All the fascination that links the
world of passion to the world unknown, is hers, and she
plays with it at her pleasure : she has all the poetry of
romance, all that is obscure, visionary and objectless, in
the imagination. It seems that the simple notes of Clara's
lute, which so delighted her youthful heart, still echo among
the rocks and mountains of the Yalois ; the mellow tones
of the minstrel's songs still mingle with the noise of the
dashing oar, and the rippling of the silver waves of the
Mediterranean; the voice of Agnes is heard from the
haunted tower ; and Schedoni's form stiU stalks through
the frowning ruins of Falinzi. The greatest treat, how-
ever, which Mrs. Eadcliffe's pen has provided for the
lovers of the marvellous and terrible, is the Froven9al tale
which Ludovico reads in the Castle of Udolpho, as the
lights are beginning to bum blue, and just before the
faces appear from behind the tapestry that carry him o£^
and we hear no more of him. This tale is of a knight,
who being engaged in a dance at some high festival of old
romance, was summoned out by another knight clad in
complete steel ; and being solemnly adjured to follow him
into the mazes of the neighbouring wood, his conductor
brought him at length to a hollow glade in the thickest
part, where he pointed to the murdered corse of another
knight, and lifldng up his beaver, showed him by the
gleam of moonlight which fell on it, that it had the &ce of
his spectre-guide ! The dramatic power in the character
of Schedoni, the Italian monk, has been much admired
and praised ; but the effect does not depend upon the cha-
racter, but the situations : not upon the figure, but upon
the background. The * Castle of Otranto ' (which is sup-

172 The English Comie Writers,

posed to have led the way to this style of writing) is, to
my notion, dry, meagre, and without effect. It is done
upon false principles of taste. The great hand and arm,
which are thrust into the court-yard, and remain there all
day long, are the pasteboard machinery of a pantomime ;
they shock the senses, and have no purchase upon the
imagination. They are a matter-of-fact impossibility : a
fixture, and no longer a phantom. Quodcunque osiendis mihi
sic, incredidtbs odi. By realising the chimeras of ignorance
and fear, begot upon shadows and dim likenesses, we take
away the very grounds of credulity and superstition ; and,
as in other cases, by facing out the imposture betray the
secret to the contempt and laughter of the spectators.
The ^ Eecess ' and the ' Old English Baron ' are also
" dismal treatises," but with little in them " at which our
fell of hair is likely to rouse and stir as life were in it."
They are dull and prosing, without the spirit of fiction
or the air of tradition to make them interesting. After
Mrs. Eadcliffe, Monk Lewis was the greatest master of the
art of freezing the blood. The robber-scene in the
' Monk ' is only inferior to that in ' Count Fathom,' and
perfectly new in the circumstances and cast of the charac-
ters. Some of his descriptions are chargeable with unpar-
donable grossness, but the pieces of poetry interspersed in
this far-fiimed novel, such as the fight of Eoncesvalles and
the Exile in particular, have a romantic and delightful
harmony, such as might be chaunted by the moonlight
pilgrim, or might lull the dreaming mariner on summer
seas.

If Mrs. Eadclifie touched the trembling chords of the
imagination, making wild music there, Mrs. Inchbald haft
no' less power over the springs of the heart. She not only
moves the affections, but melts us into '' all the luxury of
woe." Her ' Nature and Art ' is one of the most pathetic
and interesting stories in the world. It is, indeed, too
much so ; or the distress is too naked, and the situationa

The English Novelists. 173

hardly to be borne with patience. I think nothing, how-
ever, can exceed in delicacy and beauty the account of the
love-letter which the poor girl, who is the subject of the
story, receives from her lover, and which she is a fortnight
in spelling out, sooner than show it to any one else ; nor
the dreadful catastrophe of the last fatal scene, in which
the same poor creature, as her former seducer, now
become her judge, is about to pronounce sentence of death
upon her, cries out in agony — " Oh, not from you I'" The
effect of this novel upon the feelings is not only of the
most distressing, but withering kind. It blights the
sentiments, and haunts the memory. The ' Simple Story
is not much better in this respect : the gloom, however,
which hangs over it, is of a more fixed and tender kind :
we are not now lifted to ecstasy, only to be plunged in
madness ; and besides the sweetness and dignity of some
of the characters, there are redeeming traits, retrospective
glances on the course of human life, which brighten the
backward stream, and smile in hope or patience to the
last. Such is the account of Sandford, her stern and
inflexible adviser, sitting by the bedside of Miss Miller,
and comforting her in her dying moments ; thus softening
the worst pang of himian nature, and reconciling us to the
best, but not most shining virtues in human character.
The conclusion of ' Nature and Art,' on the contrary, is a
scene of heartless desolation, which must effectually deter
any one from ever reading the book twice. Mrs. Inchbald
is an instance to confute the assertion of Bousseau, that
women fail whenever they attempt to describe the passion
of love.

I shall conclude this Lecture by saying a few words of
the author of ' Caleb Williams,'* and the author of
* Waverley.' I shall speak of the last first. In knowledge,
in variety, in facility, in truth of painting, in costume and
scenery, in freshness of subject and in untired interest, in

* William Godwin. — ^Ed.

174 The Englidi Comic Writers.

glancing lights and the graces of a style passing at will
from grave to gay, from lively to severe, at once romantic
and familiar, having the utmost force of imitation and
apparent freedom of invention, these novels have the
highest claims to admiration. What lack they yet ? The
anther has all power given him from without — ^he has not,
perhaps, an equal power from within. The intensity of
the feeling is not equal to the distinctness of the imagery.
He sits like a magician in his cell, and conjures up all
shapes and sights to the view ; and with a little variation
we might apply to him what Spenser says of Fancy : —

** His chamber was depainted all within
With sundry colours, in which were writ
Infinite shape of things dispersed thin ;
Some such as in the world were never yet ;
Some daily seen and knowen by their names,
Such as in idle fantasies do flit ;
Infernal hags, centaurs, fiends, hippodames,
Apes, lions, eagles, owls, fools, lovers, children, dames."

In the midst of all this phantasmagoria, the author himself
never appears to take part with his characters, to prompt
our afifection to the good, or sharpen our antipathy to the
bad. It is the perfection of art to conceal art ; and this
is here done so completely, that while it adds to our
pleasure in the work, it seems to take away from the
merit of the author. As he does not thrust himself for-
ward in the foreground, he loses the credit of the per-
formance. The copies are so true to nature, that they
appear like tapestry figures taken off by the pattern — ^the
obvious patchwork of tradition and history. His cha-
racters are transplanted at once from their native soil to
the page which we are reading, without any traces of their
having passed through the hot-bed of the author's genius
or vanity. He leaves them as he found them ; but this is
doing wonders. The Laird and the Bailie of Bradwardine,
the idiot rhymer David Gellatly, Miss Eose Bradwardine

The English Novelists, 175

and Miss Flora Mac Ivor, her brother the Highland
Jacobite chieftain, Vich Ian Vohr, the Highland rover,
Donald Bean Lean, and the worthy page Galium Beg,
Bothwell, and Balfour of Burley, Claverhouse and
Maobriar, Elshie, the Black Dwarf, and the Bed Eeever
of Westbum Flat, Hobbie and Grace Armstrong, Lucy
Bertram and Dominie Sampson, Dirk Hatteraick and Meg
Merrilies, are at present "familiar in our mouths as
household names," and whether they are actual persons or
creations of the poet's pen, is an impertinent inquiry.
The picturesque and local scenery is* as fresh as the lichen
on the rock : the characters are a part of the scenery. If
they are put in action, it is a moving picture : if they
speak, we hear their dialect and the tones of their ypice.
If the humour is made out by dialect, the character by
the dress, the interest by the facts and documents in the
author's possession, we have no right to complain, if it is
made out ; but sometimes it hardly is, and then we have a
right to say so. For instance, in the 'Tales of my
Landlord,' Canny Elshie is not in himself so formidable or
petrific a person as the real Black Dwarf, called David
Eitchie, nor are his acts or sayings so staggering to the
imagination. Again, the first introduction of this extra-
ordinary personage, groping about among the hoary
twilight ruins of the Witch of Micklestane Moor and her
Grey Geese, is as full of preternatural power and be-
wildering effect (according to the tradition of the country)
as can be ; while the last decisive scene, where the Dwar^
in his resumed character of Sir Edward Mauley, comes
from the tomb in the chapel, to prevent the forced
marriage of the daughter of his former betrothed mistress
with the man she abhors, is altogether powerless and
tame. No situation could be imagined more finely
calculated to call forth an author's powers of imagination
and passion; but nothing is done. The assembly i&
dispersed under circumstances of the strongest natural

176 The English Comic Writers.

feeling, and the most appalling preternatural appearances,
just as if the effect had been produced by a peace-officer
entering for the same purpose. These instances of a
falling off are, however, rare ; and if this author should
not be supposed by fastidious critics to have original
genius in the highest degree, he has other qualities which
supply its place so well : his materials are so rich and
yaried, and he uses them so lavishly, that the reader is no
loser by the exchange. We are not in fear that he should
publish another novel ; we are imder no apprehension of
his exhausting himself, for he has shown that he is
inexhaustible.

Whoever else is, it is pretty clear that the author of
' Caleb Williams ' and ^ St. Leon ' is not the author of
* Waverley.' Nothing can be more distinct ox excellent in
their several ways than these two writers. If the one owes
almost everything to external observation and traditional
character, the other owes everything to internal conception
And contemplation of the possible workings of the human
mind. There is little knowledge of the world, little
variety, neither an eye for the picturesque, nor a talent for
the humorous in ' Caleb Williams,' for instance, but you
cannot doubt for a moment of the originality of the work
and the force of the conception. The impression made
upon the reader is the exact measure of the strength of
the author's genius. For the effect, both in ' Caleb
Williams ' and ' St. Leon,' is entirely made out, neither
by facts, nor dates, by black-letter or magazine learning,
by transcript nor record, but by intense and patient study
of the human heart, and by an imagination projecting
itself into certain situations, and capable of working up its
imaginary feelings to the height of reality. The author
launches into the ideal world, and must sustain himself
and the reader there by the mere force of imagination.
The sense of power in the writer thus adds to the interest
of the subject. The character of Falkland is a sort of

On the English Novelists, 177

apotheosis of the love of fame. The gay, the gallant
Falkland lives only in the good opinion of good men;
for this he adorns his soul with virtue, and tarnishes it
with crime ; he lives only for this, and dies as he loses it.
He is a lover of virtue, but a worshipper of fame. Stung
to madness by a brutal insult, he avenges himself by a
crime of the deepest dye, and the remorse of his conscience
and the stain upon his honour prey upon his peace and
reason ever after. It was into the mouth of such a cha-
racter that a modem poet has well put the words,

" Action is momentary.

The motion of a muscle, this way or that ;
Suffering is long, obscure, and infinite."

In the conflict of his feelings, he is worn to a skeleton,
wasted to a shadow. But he endures this living death to
watch over his undying reputation, and to preserve his
name imsuUied and free from suspicion. But he is at
last disappointed in this his darling object, by the very
means he takes to secure it, and by harassing and goading
Caleb Williams (whose insatiable, incessant curiosity
had wormed itself into his confldence) to a state of despe-
ration, by employing every sort of persecution, aod by
trying to hunt him from society like an infection, makes
him turn upon him, and betray the inmost secret of his
soul. The last moments of Falkland are indeed sublime :
the spark of life and the hope of imperishable reuown are
extinguished in him together ; and bending his last look
of forgiveness on his victim and destroyer, he dies a
martyr to fame, but a confessor at the shrine of virtue !
The re-action and play of these two characters into each
other's hands (like Othello and lago) is inimitably well
managed, and on a par with anything in the dramatic art ;
but Falkland is the hero of the story, Caleb Williams is
only the instrument of it. This novel is utterly imlike
anything else that ever was written, and is one of the most
original as well as powerful productions in the English

178 The English Comie Writers.

langoftge. 'St. Lean' is not eqnal to it in the plot and
groundwork, though perhaps superior in the execution* In
the one Mr. Glodwin has hit upon the eztrone point of the
perfecilj natural and perfectly new; in the other he
yentnres into the pretematnral world, and comes nearer to
the world of common-place. Still the character is of the
same exalted intellectoal kind. As the ruling passion of
the one was the love of fame, so in the other the sole
business of life is thought. Baised bj the &tal dis-
covery of the philosopher's stone aboye mortality, he is
cut off from aU participation with its pleasures. He is a
limb torn from society. In possession of eternal youth
and beauty, he can feel no love ; surrounded, tantalized,
tormented with riches, he can do no good. The races of
men pass before him as in a speculam; but he is attached
to them by no common tie of sympathy or suffering. He
is thrown back into himself and his own thoughts. He
lives in the solitude of his own breast, without wife or
child, or friend, or enemy in the world. His is the
solitude of the soul, not of woods, or seas, or mountains,
— but the desert of society, the waste and desolation of the
heart. He is himself alone. His existence is purely
contemplative, and is therefore intolerable to one who has
felt the rapture of affection or the anguish of woe. The
contrast between the enthusiastic eagerness of human
pursuits and their blank disappointment, was never,
perhaps, more finely portrayed than in this novel.
Marguerite, the wife of St. Leon, is an instance of pure
and disinterested affection in one of the noblest of her sex.
It is not improbable that the author found the model of
this character in nature. Of < Mandeville,' I shall say only
one word. It appears to me to be a falling-off in the sub-
ject, not in the ability. The style and declamation are
even more powerful than ever. But unless an author
surpasses himself, and surprises the public as much the
fourth or fifth time as he did the first, he is said to fall off.

On the English Novelists. 179

because there is not the same stimulus of novelty. A
great deal is here made out of nothing, or out of a very
disagreeable subject. I cannot agree that the story is out
of nature. The feeling is very common indeed, though
carried to an unusual and improbable excess, or to one
with which, from the individuality and minuteness of the
circumstances, we cannot readily sympathise.

It is rare that a philosopher is a writer of romances.
The union of the two characters in this author is a sort of
phenomenon in the history of letters ; for I cannot but
consider the author of ' Political Justice ' as a philosophi-
cal reasoner of no ordinary stamp or pretensions. That
work, whatever its defects may be, is distinguished by the
most acute and severe logic, and by the utmost boldness
of thinking, founded on a love and conviction of truth.
It is a system of ethics, and one that, though I think it
erroneous myself, is built on following up into its fair con-
sequences a very common and acknowledged principle —
that abstract reason and general utility are the only test
and standard of moral rectitude. If this principle is true,
then the system is true; but I think that Mr. Godwin's
book has done more than anything else to overturn the
sufficiency of this principle by abstracting, in a strict
metaphysical process, the influence of reason or the under^
standing in moral questions and relations from that of
habit, sense, association, local and personal attachment,
natural affection, &c.'; and by thus making it appear how
necessary the latter are to our limited, imperfect, and
mixed being, how impossible the former as an exclusive
guide of action, unless men were, or were capable of be-
coming, purely intellectual beings.* Beason is no doubt
one faculty of the human mind, and the chief gift of Pro-
vidence to man; but it must itself be subject to and
modified by other instincts and principles, because it is not

* Original edition has, by an apparent slip of the pen, a pwrdy
intellectual being, — ^Ed.

N 2

180 The English Comic Writers.

the only one. Tkis work then, even supposing it to be false,
is invalaable as demonstrating an important trath by the
reductio ad dbsurdum ; or it is an expenTnentum cruds in one
of the grand and trying questions of moral philosophy.
In delineating the character and feelings of the hermetio
philosopher St. Leon, perhaps the author had not far to go
from those of a speculative philosophical recluse. He
who deals in the secrets of magic, or in the secrets of the
human mind, is too often looked upon with jealous eyes
by the world, which is no great conjuror ; he who pours
out his intellectual wealth into the lap of the public, is
hated by those who cannot imderstand how he came by it ;
he who thinks beyond his age, cannot expect the feelings
of his contemporaries to go along with him ; he whose
mind is of no age or country, is seldom properly re-
cognised during his lifetime, and must wait, in order to
have justice done him, for the late but lasting award of
posteriiy. "Where his treasure is, there his heart is
also."

I 181 )

LECTUEE VII.

ON THE WOBES OF H06ABTH. ON THB 6BAND AND FAMILIAB

STYLE OF PAINTING.

If the quantity of amusement, or of matter for more
serious reflection whicli their works have afforded, is that
by which we are to judge of precedence among the intel-
lectual benefactors of mankind, there, are, perhaps, few
persons who can put in a stronger claim to our gratitude
than Hogarth. It is not hazarding too much to assert,
that he was one of the greatest comic geniuses that ever
lived, and he was certainly one of the most extraordinary
men this country has produced. The wonderful know-
ledge which he possessed of human life and manners, is
only to be surpassed (if it can be) by the power of inven-
tion with which he has combined and contrasted hi^
materials in the most ludicrous and varied points of view,
and by the mastery of execution with which he has em-
bodied and made tangible the very thoughts and passing
movements of the mind. Critics sometimes object to the
style of Hogarth's pictures, or to the class to which they
belong. First, he belongs to no class, or, if he does, it is
to the same class as Fielding, Smollett, Yanbrugh, and
Moliere. Besides, the merit of his pictures does not
depend on the liature of the subject, but on the knowledge
displayed of it, on the number of ideas they excite, on the
fund of thought and observation contained in them. They
are to be studied as works of science as well as of amuse-
ment ; they satisfy our love of truth ; they fill up the void
in the mind ; they form a series of plates in natural his-
tory, and of that most interesting part of natural history.

182 Uie English Comic Writers.

the history of our own species. Make what deductions
you please for the Yulgariiy of the subject, yet in the re-
search, the profundity, the absolute truth and precision of
the delineation of character : in the invention of incident,
in wit and humour: in the life with which they are
" instinct in every part :" in everlasting variety and
originaliiy, they never have, and probably never will be,
surpassed. They stimulate the fieusulties as well as soothe
them. ** Other pictures we see, Hogarth's we read."

The public had not long ago an opportunity of viewing
most of Hogarth's pictures, in the collection made of
them at the British Gallery.* The superiority of the ori-
ginal paintings to the common prints, is in a great measure
confined to the Marriage a la Mode with which I shall
begin my remarks.

Boccaccio, the most refined and sentimental of all the
novel-writers, has been stigmatised as a mere inventor of
licentious tales, because readers in general have only
seized on those things in his works which were suited to
their own taste, and have thus reflected their own gross-
ness back upon the writer. So it has happened that the
majority of critics having been most struck with the strong
and decided expression in Hogarth, the extreme delicacy
and subtle gradations of character in his pictures have
almost entirely escaped them. In the first picture of the
Marriage a la Mode, the three figures of the young Noble-
man, his intended Bride, and her Inamorato, the Lawyer,
show how much Hogarth excelled in the power of giving
soft and effeminate expression. They have, however, been
less noticed than the other figures, which tell a plainer
story, and convey a more palpable moral. Nothing can
be more finely managed than the differences of character
in these delicate personages. The beau sits smiling at

* In the author's ' Sketches of the Principal Picture-Galleries,'
1824, the present remarks are reprinted from this point with occa-
Bional verbal changes, — Ed.

The Works of Eogarth. 183

the looking-glass with a reflected simper of self-admiration,

and a languishing inclination of the head, while the rest

of his boay is perked up on his high heels with a certain

air of tip-toe elevation. He is the Narcissus of the reign

of George II. ; whose powdered peruke, ruffles, gold-lace,

and patches, divide his self-love unequally with his own

person — the true Sir Flume of his day :

•* Of amber-lidded snuff-box justly vain.
And the nice conduct of a clouded cane.''

Again we And the same felicity in the figure and atti-
tude of the Bride, courted by the Lawyer. There is the
utmost flexibility and yielding softness in her whole per-
son, a listless languor and tremulous suspense in the ex-
pression of her face. It is the precise look and air which \
Pope has given to his favourite Belinda, just at the
moment of the ' Eape of the Lock.' The heightened glow,
the forward intelligence, and loosened soul of love in the
same face, in the Assignation scene before the masquerade,
form a fine and instructive contrast to the delicacy,
timidity and coy reluctance expressed in the first. The
Lawyer in both pictures is much the same, perhaps too
much so ; though even this unmoved, unaltered appearance
may be designed as characteristic. In both cases he has
'' a person, and a smooth dispose, framed to make women
false." He is full of that easy good humour, and easy good
opinion of himself, with which the sex are often delighted.
There is not a sharp angle in his face to obstruct his suc-
cess, or give a hint of doubt or difficulty. His whole aspect
is roimd and rosy, lively and unmeaning, happy without the
least expense of thought, careless and inviting, and conveys
a perfect idea of the uninterrupted glide and pleasing
murmur of the soft periods that flow from his tongue.

The expression of the Bride in the Morning Scene is
the most highly seasoned, and at the same time the most
vulgar in the series. The figure, face, and attitude of the
husband are inimitable. Hogarth has with great skill

•\

184 ' The English fJomic Writers,

contrasted the pale countenance of the husband with the
yellow- whitish colour of the marble chimney-piece behind
him, in such a manner as to preserve the fleshy tone of
the former. The airy splendour of the view of the inner
room in this picture is probably not exceeded by any of
the productions of the Flemish schooL

The young girl in the third picture, who is represented
as the victim of fashionable profligacy, is unquestionably
one of the artist's chef8'd!cBuvre. The exquisite delicacy
of the painting is only surpassed by the felicity and sub-
tlety of the conception. Nothing can be more striking
than the contrast between the extreme softness of her per-
son and the hardened indifference of her character. The

• vacant stillness, the docility to vice, the premature sup-
pression of youthful sensibility, the doll-like mechanism
of the whole figure, which seems to have no other feeling
but a sickly sense of pain, show the deepest insight into
human nature, and into the effects of those refinements in

• depravity, by which it has been good-naturedly asserted
, that " vice loses half its evil in losing all its grossness."

The story of this picture is in some parts very obscure
and enigmatical. It is certain that the Nobleman is not
looking straightforward to the Quack, whom he seems to
have been threatening with his cane ; but that his eyes are
turned up with an ironical leer of triumph to the procuress.
The commanding attitude and size of this woman, the
swelling circumference of her dress, spread out like a
turkey-cock's feathers, the fierce, ungovernable, inveterate
malignity of her countenance which hardly needs the
comment of the clasp-knife to explain her purpose, are all
admirable in themselves, and still more so, as they are
opposed to the mute insensibility, the elegant negligence
of dress, and the childish figure of the girl who is sup-
posed to be her protegSe, As for the Quack, there can be
no doubt entertained about him. His face seems as if it
were composed of salve, and his features exhibit all the

The WorTcs of Eogarth. 185

xshaos and confusion of tlie most gross, ignorant, and im-
pudent empiricism. The gradations of ridiculous affec-
tation in the Music scene are finely imagined and pre-
served. The preposterous, overstrained admiration of
the lady of quality: the sentimental, insipid, patient
delight of the man, with his hair in papers, and sipping
his tea ; ^the pert, smirking, conceited, haK-distorted ap-
probation of the figure next to him ; the transition to the
total insensibility of the round face in profile^ and then
to the wonder of the negro-boy at the rapture of his mis-
tress, form a perfect whole. The sanguine complexion
and flame-coloured hair of the female virtuoso throw an
additional light on the character. This is lost in the
print. The continuing the red colour of the hair into
the back of the chair, has been pointed out as one of those
instances of what may be termed alliteration in colouring,
of which these pictures are everywhere full. The gross
bloated appearance of the Italian singer is well relieved
by the hard features of the instrumental performer behind
him, which might be carved of wood. The negro-boy
holding the chocolate, both in expression, colour and
execution, is a masterpiece. The gay, lively derision of
the other negro-boy playing with the ActsBon is an in-
genious contrast to the profound amazement of the first.
Some account has already been given of the two lovers in
this picture. It is curious to obteerve the infinite activity
of mind which the artist displays on every occasion. An
instance occurs in the present picture. He has so contrived
the papers in the hair of the bride, as to make them look
abnost like a wreath of half-blown flowers ; while those
which he has placed on the head of the musical amateur
very much resemble a cheveux-de-fria of horns, which
adorn and fortify the lack-lustre expression and mild
resignation of the fSeu^e beneath.

The Night Scene is inferior to the rest of the series.
The attitude of the husband, who is just killed, is one in

186 The English Comic Writers.

which it would be impossible for him to stand or even to
fall. It resembles the loose pasteboard figures they make
for children. The characters in the last picture, in which
the wife dies, are all masterly. I would particularly refer
to the captious, petulant self-sufficiency of the Apothecary,
whose fjEM^e and figure are constructed on exact physiog-
nomical principles, and to the fine example of passive
obedience and non-resistance in the servant, whom he is
taking to task, and whose coat of green and yellow livery
is as long and melancholy as his face. The disconsolate
look and haggard eyes, the open mouth, the comb sticking
in the hair, the broken gapped teeth which, as it were,
hitch in an answer — everything about him denotes the
utmost perplexity and dismay. The harmony and grada-
tions of colour in this picture are uniformly preserved
with the greatest nicety, and are well worthy the attention
of the artist. I have so far attempted to point out the
fund of observation, physical and moral, contained in one
set of these pictures, the Marriage ^ la Mode The rest
would furnish as many topics to descant upon, were the
patience of the reader as inexhaustible as the painter's
invention. But as this is not the case, I shall content
myself with barely referring to some of those figures in
the other pictures, which appear to me the most striking,
and which we see not only while we are looking at them,
but which we have before us at all other times. For
instance, who, having seen, can easily forget that exquisite
frost-piece of religion and morality, the antiquated Prude
in the Morning Scene, or that striking commentary on
the good old times, the little wretched appendage of a Foot-
boy who crawls, half famished and half frozen, behind
her ? The French man and woman, in the Noon, are the
perfection of flighty affectation and studied grimace ; the
BsniMe fraternization of the two old women saluting each
other is not enough to be admired ; and in the little
Master, in the same national group, we see the early

\

The WorJcs of Hogarth. 187

promise and personification of that eternal principle of
wondrous self-complacency, proof against all circnm-
Btances, and which makes the French the only people
who are vain even of being cnckolded and being con-
quered ! Or shall we prefer to this the outrageous distress
and unmitigated terrors of the Boy who has dropped
his dish of meat, and who seems red all over with
shame and vexation, and bursting with the noise he makes ?
Or what can be better than the good housewifery of the
Girl underneath, who is devouring the lucky fragments ;
or than the plump, ripe, florid, luscious look of the
Servant- wench near her, embraced by a greasy rascal of
an Othello, with her pie-dish tottering Hke her virtue,
and with the most precious part of its contents running
over? Just — no, not quite — as good is the joke of
the Woman overhead who, having quarrelled with her
Husband, is throwing their Sunday's dinner out of the
window, to complete this chapter of accidents of baked
dishes. The Husband in the Evening Scene is certainly
as meek as any recorded in history ; but I cannot say that
I admire this picture, or the Night Scene after it. But
then, in the Taste in High-Life, there is that inimitable
pair, differing only in sex, congratulating and delighting
one another by " all the mutually reflected charities " of
folly and affectation, with the young Lady coloured like
a rose, dandling her little, black, pug-faced, white-teethed,
chuckling favourite, and with the portrait of Monsieur
Des Noyers in the background, dancing in a grand ballet,
siurrounded by butterflies. And again, in the Election
Dinner, is the immortal Gobbler, surrounded by his Peers,

who,

" frequent and full.

In loud recess and brawUng oonclave sit :"

the Jew in the second picture, a very Jew in grain : in»
numerable fine sketches of heads in the Polling for Votes,
of which the Nobleman overlooking the Caricaturist is the-

188 The English Comic Writers.

fieoond best, and the Blind-man going np to vote, the best ;
and then the irresistible, tnmnltnons display of broad
hnmonr in the Chairing the Member, which is perhaps,
of all Hogarth's pictures, the most fall of langhable in-
cidents and situations ; the yellow, rosty-faced Thresher
with his swinging flail breaking the heaA of one of the
chairmen ; and his redoubted antagonist, the Sailor, with
his oak-stick and stamping wooden-leg — a supplemental
cudgel; the persevering ecstasy of the hobbling Blind
Fiddler who, in the &ay, appears to have been trod upon
by the artificial excrescence of the honest tar; Monsieur
the monkey, with piteous aspect, speculating the impending
disaster of the triumphant Candidate, and his brother
Bruin appropriating the paunch; the precipitous flight
of the Pigs souse over head into the water ; the fine Lady
fainting, with vermilion lips; and the two Chimney
Sweepers, satirical yoxmg rogues ! I had almost forgot
the Politician, who is burning a hole through his hat with
a candle in reading a newspaper ; and the Chickens in the
March to Finchley, wandering in search of their lost dam,
who is found in the pocket of the Serjeant. Of the pic-
tures in the Bake's Progress, exhibited in this collection,
I shall not here say anything, because I think them on
the whole inferior to the prints, and because they have
already been criticised by a writer, to whom I could add
nothing, in a paper which ought to be read by every lover
of Hogarth and of English genius — ^I mean Mr. Lamb's
Essay on the works of Hogarth. I shall at present pro-
ceed to form some estimate of the style of art in which
this painter excelled.

What distinguishes his compositions from all others of
the same general kind, is, that they are equally remote
from caricature, and from mere still life. It of
course happens in subjects taken from common life, that
the painter can procure real models, and he can get
them to sit as long as he pleases. Hence, in general.

The Works of Hogarth. 189^

those attitudes and expressions have been chosen which
conld be assumed the longest ; and in imitating which the
artist, by taking pains and time, might produce almost as
complete facsimiles as he could of a flower or a flower-
pot, of a damask curtain or a china vase. The copy was
as perfect and as uninteresting in the one case as in the
other. On the contraiy, subjects of drollery and ridicule
aflbrding frequent examples of strange deformity and
peculiarity of features, these have been eagerly seized by
another class of artists who, without subjecting themselves
to the laborious drudgery of the Dutch school and their
imitators, have produced our popular caricatures by
rudely copying or exaggerating the casual irregularities of
the human coimtenance. Hogarth has equally avoided
the faults of both these styles : the insipid tameness of the
one and the gross extravagance of the other, so as to give
to the productions of his pencil equal solidity and effect.
For his faces go to the very verge of caricature, and yet
never (I believe in any single instance) go beyond it :
they take the very widest latitude, and yet we always see
the links which bind them to nature : they bear all the
marks and carry all the conviction of reality with them^
as if we had seen the actual faces for the flrst time, from
the precision, consistency, and good sense with which the
whole and every part is made out. They exhibit the most
uncommon features with the most imcommon expressions,
but which yet are as familiar and intelligible as possible,
because with all the boldness, they have all the truth, of
nature. Hogarth has left behind him as many of these
memorable faces in their memorable moments as, perhaps,
most of us remember in the course of our lives, and has
thus doubled the quantity of our experience.

It will assist us in forming a more determinate idea of
the peculiar genius of Hogarth, to compare him with a
deservedly admired artist in our own times. The highest
authority on art in this cointry, I understand, has pro-

190 The English Comic Writers.

nonnced that Mr. Wilkie nnited the excellences of Hogarth
to those of Teniers. I demur to this decision in hoth its
branches ; but in demurring to authority, it is necessary
to give our reasons. I conceiye that this ingenious and
attentive observer of nature has certain essential, real and
indisputable excellences of his own ; and I think it, there-
fore, the less important to clothe him with any yicarious
merits which do not belong to him. Mr. Wilkie's pictures,
generally speaking, derive almost their whole value from
their reality y or the truth of the representation. They are
works of pure imitative art ; and the test of this style of
composition is to represent nature faithfully and happily
in its simplest combinations. It may be said of an artist
like Mr. Wilkie, that nothing human is indifferent to him.
His mind takes an interest in, and it gives an interest to,
the most familiar scenes and transactions of life. He
professedly gives character, thought and passion in their
lowest degrees, and in their every-day forms. He selects
the commonest events and appearances of nature for his
subjects, and trusts to their very commonness for the
interest and amusement he is to excite. Mr. Wilkie . is a
serious, prosaic, literal narrator of fistcts ; and his pictures
may be considered as diaries, or minutes of what is
passing constantly about us. Hogarth, on the contraiy, is
essentially a comic painter ; his pictures are not indifferent,
unimpassioned descriptions of human nature, but rich,
exuberant satires upon it He is carried away by a
passion for the ridiculous. His object is '' to show vice
her own feature, scorn her own image." He is so far
from contenting himself with still-life, that he is always
on the verge of caricature, though without ever falling
into it. He does not represent folly or vice in its
incipient, or dormant, or grub state, but full grown, with
wings, pampered into all sorts of affectation, airy,
ostentatious and extravagant. Folly is there seen at the
lieight, the moon is at the fall; it is "the very error of

Tlie WorJcs of Hogarth. 191

the time." There is a perpetual collision of eccentricitieB,
a tilt and tournament of absurdities ; the prejudices and
caprices of mankind are let loose, and set together by the
ears as in a bear-garden. Hogarth paints nothing but
comedy or tragi-comedy. WiUde paints neither one nor
the other. Hogarth never looks at any object but to find
out a piord ^r a ludicrous effect. Wilkie never looks at
any object but to see that it is there. Hogarth's pictures
are a perfect jest-book from one end to the other. I do
not remember a single joke in Wilkie's, except one very
bad one of the boy in the ' Blind Fiddler/ scraping the
gridiron or fire-shovel, I forget which it is.* In looking
at Hogarth, you are ready to burst your sides with laugh-
ing at the unaccountable jumble of odd things which are
brought together; you look at Wilkie's pictures with a
mingled feeling of curiosity and admiration at the
accuracy of the representation. For instance, there is a
most admirable head of a man coughing in the Eent-
day; the action, the keeping, the choked sensation, are
inimitable: but there is nothing to laugh at in a man
coughing. What strikes the mind is the difficulty of a
man's being painted coughing, which here certainly is a
masterpiece of art. But turn to the blackguard Cobbler
in the Election Dinner, who has been smutting his
neighbour's face over, and who is lolling out his tongue at
the joke with a most surprising obliquity of vision ; and
immediately " your lungs begin to crow like chanticleer."
Again, there is the little boy crying in the Cut Finger,
who only gives you the idea of a cross, disagreeable,
obstinate child in pain: whereas the same fEice in
Hogarth's Noon, from the ridiculous perplexity it is in,
and its extravagant, noisy, unfelt distress at the accident
of having let fall the pie-dish, is quite irresistible. Mr.
Wilkie, in his picture of the Alehouse-door, I beliove,

* The Waiter drawing the cork, in the Bent-day, is anothex ex-
ception, and quite Hogarthian.

192 The English Comic Writers.

painted Mr. Liston as one of tlie figures, without any great
effect Hogarth would have given any price for such a
subject, and would have made it worth any money. I
, have never seen anything, in the expression of comic
humour equal to Hogarth's pictures, but Listen's face !

Mr. Wilkie paints interiors : but still you generally
connect them with the country. Hogarth, even when he
paints people in the open air, represents them either as
coming from London, as in the polling for votes at
Brentford, or as returning to it, as the dyer and his wife
at Bagnigge Wells. In this last picture, he has contrived
to convert a common rural image into a type and emblem
of city honours. In fact, I know no one who had a less
pastoral imagination than Hogarth. He delights in the
thick of St. Giles's or St. James's. His pictures breathe
a certain close, greasy, tavern air. The fare he serves up
to us consists of high-seasoned dishes, ragouts and oUa
podridas, like the supper in * Gil Bias,' which it requires a
strong stomach to digest. Mr. Wilkie presents us with a
sort of lenten fare, very good and wholesome, but rather
insipid than overpowering I Mr. WilMe's pictures are, in
general, much better painted than Hogarth's; but the
Marriage a la Mode is superior both in colour and
execution to any of Wilkie's. I may add here without
any disparagement that, as an artist, Mr. Wilkie is hardly
to be mentioned with Teniers. Neither in truth and
brilliant clearness of colouring, nor in facility of execution,
is there any comparison. Teniers was a perfect master in
all these respects, and our own countryman is positively
defective, notwithstanding the very laudable care with
which he finishes every part of his pictures. There is an
evident smear and dragging of the paint, which is also of
a bad purple or puttyish tone, and which never appears in
the pictures of the Flemish artist, any more than in a
looking-glass. Teniers, probably from his facility of
execution, succeeded in giving a more local and momentary

The Works of Hogarth. 193

oxpression to his figures. They seem each going on with
his particular amusement or occupation ; Wilkie's have, in
general, more a look of sitting for their pictures. Their
compositions are very different also : and in this respect,
I believe, Mr. WiUde has the advantage. Teniers's boors
are usually amusing themselves at skittles, or dancing, or
drinking, or smoking, or doing what they like, in a care-
less, desultory way ; and so the composition is loose and
irregular. Wilkie's figures are all drawn up in a regular
order, and engaged in one principal action, with occasional
episodes. The story of the Blind Fiddler is the most
interesting, and the best told. The two children standing
before the musician are delightful. The Card-players
is the best coloured of his pictures, if I am not mistaken.
The Village Politicians, though excellent as to character
and composition, is inferior as a picture to those which
Mr. Wilkie has since painted. £[is latest pictures, how-
ever, do not appear to me to be his best. There is some-
thing of manner and affectation in the grouping of the
figures, and a pink and rosy colour spread over them
which is out of place. The hues of Eubens and Sir
Joshua do not agree with Mr. Wilkie's subjects. One of
his last pictures, that of Duncan Gray, is equally
remarkable for sweetness and simplicity in colour, compo-
sition, and expression. I must here conclude this very
general account; for to point out the particular beauties of
every one of his pictures in detail, would require an Essay

by itself.

I have promised to say something in this Lecture on
the difference between the grand and familiar style of
painting ; and I shall throw out what imperfect hints I
have been able to collect on this subject, so often
attempted, and never yet succeeded in, taking the examples
and illustrations from Hogarth, that is, from what he pos-
sessed or wanted in each kind.

And first, the difference is not that between imitation

o

194 27*6 English Comic Writers.

ftnd inyeniion ; for there is as mncli of this last quality in
Hogarth, as in any painter or poet whatever. As, for
example, to take two of his pictures only, I mean the
Enraged Musician and the Gin Lane; in one of which
every conceivable variety of disagreeable and discordant
sound — the razor-grinder turning his wheel : the boy with
his drum, and the girl with her rattle momentarily sus-
pended : the pursuivant blowing his horn : the shrill
milkwoman: the inexorable ballad-singer, with her
squalling infant : the pewterer's shop close by : the fish-
women: the chimney-sweepers at the top of a chimney,
and the two cats in melodious concert on the ridge of the
tiles : with the bells ringing in the distance, as we see by
the flags flying ; — and in the other, the complicated forms
and signs of death and ruinous decay — ^the woman on the
stairs of the bridge asleep, letting her child fall over : her
ghastly companion opposite, next to death's door, with
hollow, famished cheeks and staring ribs : the dog fighting
with the man for the bare shin-bone : the man hanging
himself in a garret : the female corpse put into a cof&n
by the parish beadle : the men marching after a funeral,
seen through a broken wall in the background : and the
very houses reeling as if drunk and tumbling about the
ears of the infatuated victims below, the pawnbroker's
being the only one that stands firm and unimpaired —
enforce the moral meant to be conveyed by each of these
pieces with a richness and research of combination and
artful contrast not easily paralleled in any production of
the pencil or the pen. The clock pointing to four in the
morning, in Modem Midnight Conversation, just as tho
immovable Parson Ford is filling out another glass from
a brimming puAch-bowl, while most of his companions,
with the exception of the sly Lawyer, are falling around
him '^ like leaves in October ;" and again, the extraordinary
mistake of the man leaning against the post, in the Lord
Mayor's Procession — show a mind capable of seizing the

The WorJcs of HogaHh. 1 95

most rare and transient coincidences of things, of imagin-
ing wliat either never happened at all, or of instantly
fixing on and applying to its purpose what never happened
but once. So far, the invention shown in the great style
of painting is poor in the comparison. Indeed, grandeur
is supposed (whether rightly or not, I shall not here
inquire) to imply a simplicity inconsistent with this
inexhaustible variety of incident and circumstantial detail.
Secondly, the difference between the ideal and familiar
style is not to be explained by the difference between the
genteel and vulgar ; for it is evident that Hogarth was
almost as much at home in the genteel comedy as in the
broad farce of his pictures. He excelled not only in ex-
hibiting the coarse humours and disgusting incidents of
low Hfe, but in exhibiting the vices, follies, and frivolity
of the fashionable manners of his time : his fine ladies
hardly yield the palm to his waiting-maids, and his lords
and his footmen are on a respectable footing of equality.
There is no want, for example, in the Marriage-a-la-Mode,
or in Taste in High Life, of affectation verging into
idiotidm, or of languid sensibility that might —

•* Die of a rose in aromatic pain."

•

In short, Hogarth was a painter not of low, but of actual
life ; and the ridiculous and prominent features of high
or low life, of the great vulgar or the small, lay equally
open to him. The Country Girl, in the first plate of the
Harlot's Progress, coming out of the waggon, is not more
simple and ungainly than the same figure, in the second,
is thoroughly initiated into the mysteries of her art, and
suddenly accomplished in all the airs and graces of affecta-
tion, ease, and impudence. The affected languor and im-
becility of the same girl afterwards, when put to beat
hemp in Bridewell, is exactly in keeping with the cha-
racter she has been taught to assume. Sir Joshua could
do nothing like it in his line of portrait, which differed

o 2

196 The English Comic Writers.

chiefly in the background. The fine gentleman at his
levee, in the Hake's Progress, is also a complete model of
a person of rank and fortune, surrounded by needy and
-worthless adventurers, fiddlers, poetasters and virtuosi, as
wr«s the custom in those days. Lord Chesterfield himself
would not have been disgraced by sitting for it. I might
multiply examples to show that Hogarth was not charao-
teristically deficient in that kind of elegance which arises
from an habitual attention to external appearance and
deportment. I will only add as instances, among his
women, the two elegantes in the Bedlam scene, which are
dressed (allowing for the difierence of not quite a century)
in the manner of Ackerman's dresses for May ; and among
the men, the Lawyer in Modem Midnight Conversation,
whose gracious significant leer and sleek lubricated coun-
tenance exhibit all the happy finesse of his profession,
when a silk gown has been added, or is likely to be added
to it; and several figures in the Cockpit, who are
evidently, at the first glance, gentlemen of the old school,
and where the mixture of the blacklegs with the higher
character is a still further test of the discriminating skill
of the painter.

Again, Hogarth had not only a perception of fashion,
but a sense of natural beauty. There a?e as many pleasing
faces in his pictures as in Sir Joshua. Witness the girl
picking the Hake's pocket in the Bagnio scene, whom we
might suppose to be " the Charming Betsy Careless :" the
Poet's wife, handsomer than falls to the lot of most poets,
who are generally more intent upon the idea in their own
minds than on the image before them, and are glad to
take up with Dulcineas of their own creating : the thea-
trical heroine in the Southwark Fair, who would be an
accession to either of our playhouses: the girl asleep,
ogled by the clerk in church-time, and the sweetheart of
the Good Apprentice in the reading-desk, in the second of
that serier, almost an ideal face and expression : the girl

The WorJcs of Hogarth. 197

in her cap selected for a partner by the footman in the
print of Morning, very handsome . and many others equally
so, scattered like " stray gifts of love and beauty " through
these pictures. Hogarth was not then exclusively the
painter of deformity. He painted beauty or ugliness in-
differently, as they came in his way ; and was not by
nature confined to those faces which are painful and dis-
gusting, as many would have us believe.

Again, neither are we to look for the solution of the
difficulty in the difference between the comic and the
tragic, between loose laughter and deep passion. For
Mr. Lamb has shown unanswerably that Hogarth is quite
at home in scenes of the deepest distress, in the heart-
rending calamities of common life, in the expression of
ungovernable rage, silent despair, or moody madness, en-
hanced by the tenderest sympathy, or aggravated by the
frightful contrast of the most impenetrable and obdurate
insensibility, as we see strikingly exemplified in the latter
prints of the Kake's Progress. To the unbeliever in
Hogarth's power over the passions and the feelings of the
heart, the characters there speak like " the handwriting
on the wall." If Mr. Lamb has gone too far in paralleling
some of these appalling representations with Shakspeare,
he was excusable in being led to set off what may be con-
sidered as a staggering paradox against a rooted prejudice.
At any rate, the inferiority of Hogarth (be it what it may)
did not arise &om a want of passion and intense feeling ;
and in this respect he had the advantage over Fielding,
for instance, and others of our comic writers, who excelled
only in the light and ludicrous. There is in general a
distinction, almost an impassable one, between the power
of embodying the serious and the ludicrous ; but these
contradictory faculties were reconciled in Hogarth, as
they were in Shakspeare, in Chaucer, and as it is said
that they were in another extraordinary and later instance,
Garrick's acting.

198 The English Camie Writers.

None of these then will do: neither will the most
masterly and entire keeping of character lead ns to an
e3q>lanation of the grand and ideal style; for Hogarth
possessed the most complete and ahsolnte mastery over
the truth and identity of expression and features in his
subjects. Every stroke of his pencil tells according to a
preconception in his mind. If the eye squints, the mouth
is distorted ; every feature acts, and is acted upon by the
rest of the £eu% ; even the dress and attitude are such as
could be proper to no other figure ; the whole is under
the influence of one impulse, that of truth and nature.
Look at the heads in the Cockpit already mentioned, one
of the most masterly of his productions in this way, where
the workings of the mind are seen in every muscle of
every feKse, and the same expression, more intense or
relaxed, of hope or of fear, is stamped on each of the cha-
racters, so that you could no more transpose any part of
one countenance to another, than you could change a
profile to a front fibce. Hogarth was, in one sense, strictly
an historical painter : that is, he represented the manners
and humours of mankind in action, and their characters
by varied expression. Everything in his pictures has life
and motion in it. Ndt only does the business of the
scene never stand still, but every feature is put into full
play ; the exact feeling of the moment is brought out, and
carried to its utmost height, and then instantly seized and
stamped on the canvas for ever. The expression is always
taken en pcLssant, in a state of progress or change, and, as
it were, at the salient point. Besides the excellence of
each individual face, the reflection of the expression from
fitce to face, the contrast and struggle of particular motivcR
and feelings in the different actors in the scene, as of
anger, contempt, laughter, compassion, are conveyed in
the happiest and most lively manner. His figures are not
like the background on which they are painted : even the
pictures on the wall have a peculiar look of their owiio

The Works of Hogarth 199

All this is effected by a few decisive and rapid touches of
the pencil, careless in appearance, but infallible in their
results; so that one great criterion of the grand stylo
insisted on by Sir Joshua Eeynolds, that of leaving out
the details, and attending to general character and outline,*
belonged to Hogarth. He did not indeed arrive at middle
forms or neutral expression, which Sir Joshua makes
another test of the ideal; for Hogarth was not insipid.
That was the last fault with which he could be charged.
But he had breadth and boldness of manner, as well as any
of them ; so that neither does that constitute the ideal.

What then does ? We have reduced this to something
like the last remaining quantity in an equation, where all
the others have been ascertained. Hogarth had all the
other parts of an original and accomplished genius except
this, but this he had not. He had an intense feeling and
command over the impressions of sense, of habit, of cha-
racter, and passion, the serious and the comic, in a word,
of nature, as it fell within his own observation, or came
within the sphere of his actual experience; but he had
little power beyond that sphere, or sympathy with that
L which existed only in idea. He was '* conformed to this
world, not transformed.*' If he attempted to paint Fha-
roah's daughter, and Paul before Felix, he lost himself.
His mind had feet and hands, but not wings to fly with.
There is a mighty world of sense, of custom, of every-day
action, of accidents and objects coming home to us, and
interesting because they do so ; the gross, material, stir-
ring, noisy world of common life and selfish passion, of
which Hogarth was absolute lord and master: there is
another mightier world, that which exists only in concep-
tion and in power, the universe of thought and sentiment*
that surrounds and is raised above the ordinary world of
reality, as the empyrean surrounds this nether globe, into
which few are privileged to soar with mighty wings out-
* See * Table-Talk,* edit 1821, vol i p. 814.— Ed.

200 The English Comic Writers.

spread, and in which, as power is given them to embody
their aspiring fancies, to ^' give to airy nothing a local
habitation and a name," to fill with imaginary shapes of
beauty or sublimity, and make the dark abyss pregnant,
bringing that which is remote home to us, raising them-
selves to the lofty, sustaining themselves on the refined and
abstracted, making all things like not what we know and
feel in ourselves, in this "ignorant present" time, but
like what they must be in themselves, or in our noblest
idea of them, and stamping that idea with reality (but
chiefly clothing the best and the highest with grace and
grandeur) : this is the ideal in art, in poetry, and in
painting. There are things which are cognisable only to
sense, which interest only our more immediate instincts
and passions : the want of food, the loss of a limb or of
a sum of money ; there are others that appeal to different
and nobler faculties : the wants of the mind, the hunger
and thirst after truth and beauty — that is, to faculties
commensurate with objects greater and of greater refine-
ment, which to be grand must extend beyond ourselves to
others, and our interest in which must be refined in pro-
portion as they do so.* The interest in these subjects is
in proportion to the power of conceiving them, and the
power of conceiving them is in proportion to the interest
and affection for them, to the innate bias of the mind to
elevate itseK above everything low, and purify itself from
everything gross. Hogarth only transcribes or transposes
what was tangible and visible, not the abstracted and in-
telligible. You see in his pictures only the faces which
you yourseK have seen, or others like tiiem ; none of his

♦ When Meg Merrilies says in her dying moments--** Nay, nay,
lay my head to the East," what was the East to her ? Not a reiEdity,
but an idea of distant time and the land of her fore£eithers ; the last,
the strongest, and the best that occurred to her in this world. Her
gipsy slang and dress were quaint and grotesque; her attachment to
the Kaim of Demdengh and the wood of Warroch was romantic ; her
worship of the East was ideal.

The Works of Eoffarth. 201

characters are thinking of any person o^ thing out of the
picture ; you are only interested in the objects of their
contention or pursuit, because they themselves are in-
terested in them. There is noticing remote in thought,
or comprehensive in feeling. The whole is intensely
personal and local: but the interest of the idealand
poetical style of art relates to more permanent and
universal 'objects ; and the characters and forms must be
such as to correspond with and sustain that interest, and
give external grace and dignity to it. Such were the
subjects which Eaphael chose ; faces imbued with unalter-
able sentiment, and figures that stand in the eternal
silence of thought. He places before you objects of ever-
lasting interest, events of greatest magnitude, and persons
in them fit for the scene and action : warriors and kings,
princes and nobles, and greater yet, poets and philoso-
phers^ and mightier than these, patriarchs and apostles,
prophets and founders of religion, saints and martyrs,
angels and the Son of God. We know their importance
and their high calling, and we feel that they do not belie
it. We see them as they were painted, with the eye of
fisdth. The light which they have kindled in the world
is reflected back upon their faces ; the awe and homage
which has been paid to them is seated upon their brOw,
and encircles them like a glory. All those who come
before them are conscious of a superior presence. For
example, the beggars, in the Gate Beautiful, are impressed
with this ideal borrowed character. Would not the cripple
and the halt feel a difference of sensation, and express it
outwardly ia such circumstances ? And was the painter
wrong to transfer this sense of preternatural power and
the confidence of a saving faith to his canvas ? Hogarth's
Fool of Bethesda, on the contrary, is only a collection of
common beggars receiving an alms. The waters may be
stirred, but the mind is not stirred with them. The fowls,
again, in the Miraculous Draught of Fishes, exult and

202 Tlie English Comio Writers.

clap their wings, and seem lifted up with some nnnsnal
cause of joy. There is not the same expansive, elevated
principle in Hogarth. He has amiable and praiseworthy-
characters, indeed, among his bad ones.. The Master of
the Indnstrioos and Idle Apprentice is a good citizen and
a virtnons man ; but his benevolence is mechanical and
confined : it extends only to his shop, or at most to his
ward. His face is not ruffled by passion, nor is it inspired
by thought. To give another instance, the face of the
faithful Female, fainting in the prison scene in the Bake'ff
Progress, is more one of effeminate softness than of dis-
interested tenderness or heroic constancy. But in the
pictures of the Mother and Child by Baphael and Leonardo
Da Vinci, we see all the tenderness purified from all the
weakness of maternal affection, and exalted by the prospects
of religious faith ; so that the piety and devotion of future
generations seems to add its weight to the expression of
feminine sweetness and parental love, to press upon the
heart and breathe in the countenance. This is the idetd^
passion blended with thought and pointing to distant
objects, not debased by grossness, not thwarted by accident,
not weakened by familiarity, but connected with forms
and circumstances that give the utmost possible expansion
and refinement to the general sentiment. With all my
admiration of Hogarth, I cannot think him equal to
Eaphael. I do not know whether, if the portfolio were
opened, I would not as soon look over the prints of
Hogarth as those of Baphael; but, assuredly, if the
question were put to me, I would sooner never have seen
the prints of Hogarth, than never have seen those of
BaphaeL It is many years ago since I first saw the prints
of the Cartoons hanging round the old-fashioned parlour
of a little inn in a remote part of the country.* I was
then young : I had heard of the fame of the Cartoons, but

* Apparently about 1798, at St. Neot's, Huntingdonshire. See
* Memoirs of W. HazHtt,' 1867, i. 71.— Ed.

The WorJcs of Hogarth. 203

this was the first time J had ever been admitted face to
face into the presence of those divine guests. '^ How was
I then uplifted !" Prophets and Apostles stood before
me as in a dream, and the Saviour of the Christian world,
with his attributes of faith and power; miracles were
working on the walls ; the hand of Baphael was there ;
and as his pencil traced the lines,J[ saw godlilss spirits
and Joft^ shapes descend and walk ^lsiBIj the earth, but
as^^ their thoughts still lifted them above the earth.
There I saw the figure of St. Paul, pointing with noble
fervour to '^ temples not made with hands, eternal in the
heavens ;" and that finer one of Christ in the boat, whose
whole figure seems sustained by meekness and love ; and
that of the same person surrounded by his disciples, like
a flock of sheep listening to the music of some divine
shepherd. I knew not how enough to admire them. —
Later in life,"* I saw other works of this great painter (with
more like them) collected in the Louvre : where Art, at
that time, lifted up her head, and was seated on her throne,
and said, *' All eyes shall see me, and all knees shall
bow to me l" Honour was done to her and all hers. There
was her treasure, and there the inventory of all she had.
There she had gathered together her pomp, and there was
her shrine, and there her votaries came and worshipped as
in a temple. The crown she wore was brighter than that
of kings. Where the struggles for human liberty had
been, there were' the triumphs of human genius. For
there, in the Louvre, were the precious monuments of art :
there " stood the statue that enchants the world ;** there
was Apollo, the Laocoon, the Dying Gladiator, the head
of the Antinous, Diana with her Fawn, the Muses and
the Graces in a ring, and all the glories of the antique

world : —

'* There was old Proteus coming from the sea,
And wreathed Triton blew his winding hom."

* In 1802. See * Memoirs of W. Hazlitt,' 1867, L 84, et seq.—Bv.

204 The English Catnie Writers.

There, too, were the two St Jeromes, Corr^gio's and
Domemchino's ; there was Baphael's Transfignration ;
the St. Mark of Tintoret ; Paul Veronese's Marriage of
Cana; the Deluge of Ponssin; and Titian's St. Peter
Martyr. It was there that I learned to heoome an
enthusiast of the lasting works of the great painters, and
of their names no less magnificent ; gratefol to the heart
at * the sound of celestial harmony from other spheres,
waking aronnd ns (whether heard or not) from youth to
age ; the stay, the gnide, and anchor of our purest thoughts ;
whom, having once seen, we always remember, and who
teach us to see all things through them ; without "whom
life would be to begin again, and the earth barren; of
Baphael, who lifted the human form half way to heaven ;
of Titian, who painted the mind in the face, and unfolded
the soul of things to the eye ; of Bubens, around whose
pencil gorgeous shapes thronged numberless, startling us
by the novel accidents of form and colour, putting the
spirit of motion into the universe, and weaving a gay
fantastic round and Bacchanalian dance with nature ; of
Bembrandt, too, who '' smoothed the raven down of dark-
ness till it smiled," and tinged it with a light like streaks
of burnished ore ; of these, and more than these, of whom
the world was scarce worthy, and for the loss of whom
nothing could console me — not even the works of
Hogarth!

* Original edition has a». — ^Ed.

( 205 )

LECTUEE Vni.

ON THE GOMIO WBITEBS OP THE LAST CENTUBT.

The question which has been often asked, Why there are
comparatively so few good modern CoTnedies ? appears in a
great measure to answer itself. It is because so many
excellent comedies have been written, that there are none
written at present. Comedy naturally wears itself out, \
destroys the very food on which it lives ; and by con-
stantly and successfully exposing the follies and weak-
nesses of mankind to ridicule, in the end leaves itseK
^ nothing worth laughing at. It holds the mirror up to
nature ; and men, seeing their most striking peculiarities
and defects pass in gay review before them, learn either to
avoid or conceal them. It is not the criticism which the
public taste exercises upon the stage, but the criticism
which the stage exercises upon public manners, that is
fatal to comedy, by rendering the subject-matter of it tame,
correct, and spiritless. We are drilled into a sort of
stupid decorum, and forced to'wear the same dull uniform
of outward appearance ; and yet it is asked^ why the Comic
Muse does not point, as she was wont, at the peculiarities
of our gait and gesture, and exhibit the picturesque con-
trasts of our dress and costume in all that graceful variety
in which she delights. The genuine source of comic
writing,

" Where it must live, or have no life at alV

is undoubtedly to be found in the distinguishing pecu-
liarities of men and manners. Now this distinction can
subsist, so as to be strong, pointed, and general, only

206 The English Comic Writers.

wldle the nuumers of dilSerent classes are formed almost
immediately by their particular circmnstances, and the
characters of individuals by their natural temperament and
situation, without being everlastingly modified and
neutralized by intercourse with the world — ^by knowledge
and education. In a certain stage of society, men may be
said to vegetate like trees, and to become rooted to the soil
in which they grow. They have no idea of anything
beyond themselves and their immediate sphere of action ;
they are, as it were, circumscribed and defined by their
particular circumstances they are what their situation
makes them, and nothing more. Each is absorbed in his
own profession or pursuit, and each in his turn contracts
that habitual peculiarity of manners and opinions which
makes him the subject of ridicule to others, and the sport
of the Comic Muse. Thus the physician is nothing but a
physician, the lawyer is a mere lawyer, the scholar
degenerates into a pedant, the country squire is a different
species of being from the fine gentleman, the citizen and the
courtier inhabit a different world, and even the affectation
of certain characters, in aping the follies or vices of their
betters, only serves to oham the immeasurable distance
which custom or fortune has placed between them. Hence
the earlier comic writers, taking advantage of this mixed
and solid mass of ignorance, folly, pride, and prejudice,
made those deep and lasting incisions into it, have given
those sharp and nice touches, that bold relief to their cha-
racters, have opposed them in every variety of contrast
and collision, of conscious self-satisfaction and mutual
antipathy, with a power that can only find full scope in the
same rich and inexhaustible materials. But in proportion
as comic genius succeeds in taking off the mask from
ignorance and conceit, as it teaches us

" To see ourselres as others see us, — "
in proportion as we are brought out on the stage together,

Comic Writers of the last Century. 207

and our prejudices clash one against the other, our sharp
angular points wear off; we are no longer rigid in
absurdity, passionate in folly ; anc^we prevent the ridicule
directed at our habitual foibles by laughing at them
ourselves.

If it be said, that there is the same fund of absurdity
and prejudice in the world as ever, that there are the
same unaccountable perversities lurking at the bottom of
every breast, I should answer. Be it so : but at least we
keep our follies to ourselves as much as possible; we
palliate, shuffle, and equivocate with them; they sneak
into bye-comers, and do not, like Chaucer's CarUerhurif,
Pilgrims, march along the high road, and form a proces-
sion ; they do not entrench themselves strongly behind
custom and precedent ; they are not embodied in profes-
sions and ranks in life ; th^ are not organised into a
system ; they do not openly resort to a standard, but are a
sort of straggling nondescripts that, like Wart, " present
no mark fo tiie foeman." As to the gross and palpable
absurdities of modem manners, they are too shallow and
barefEUied, and those who affect are too little seriom in
them, to make them worth the detection of the Comic -
Muse. They proceed from an idle, impudent affectation,
of folly in general in the dashing bravura style, not from
an infatuation with any of its characteristic modes. In
short, the proper object of ridicule is egotism : and a man
cannot be a very great egotist, who every day sees himself
represented on the s)iage. We are deficient in comedy,,
because we are without characters in real life : as we have
no historical pictures, because we have no faces proper for
them.

It is, indeed, the evident tendency of aU literottore to
generalise and dissipate character, by giving men the same
artificial education and the same common stock of ideas :.
so that we see all objects &om the same point of view and
through the same reflected medium. We learn to exist,.

208 The English Comic Writers.

not in ourselves, but in books; all men become alike
mere readers : spectators, not actors in the scene, and lose
their proper personal identity. The templar, the wit, the
man of pleasure, and the man of fashion, the courtier and
the citizen, the knight and the squire, the lover and the
miser — Lovelace^ Lothario, Will Honeycomby and Sir Boger
de Coverley, Sparhish and Lord Foppington, Western and
Tom Jones, My Father and My Unde Toby, MiUamant and
Sir Sampson Legend, Don Quixote and Sancho, Gil Bias and
Guzman d^Alfara,che, Count Faihom and Joseph Suiface :
have met and exchanged commonplaces on the barren
plains of the haute littSraiure : toil slowly on to the temple
of science, ^^ seen a long way off upon a level," and end in
one dull compound of politics, criticism, chemistry, and
metaphysics !

We cannot expect to reconcile opposite things. I^ for
example, any of us were to put ourselves into the stage-
coach from Salisbury to London, it is more than probable
we should not meet with the same number of odd accidents
or ludicrous distresses on the road, that befel Parson
Adams ; but why, if we get into a common vehicle, and
submit to the conveniences of modem travelling, should
we complain of the want of adventures? Modem
manners may be compared to a modem stage-coach ; our
limbs may be a little cramped with the confinement, and
we may grow drowsy, but we arrive safe, without any very
amusing or very sad accident, at our joumey's end.

In this theory I have, at least, the authority of Sterne
and the Tatler on my side, who attribute the greater va-
riety and richness of comic excellence in our writers, to the
greater variety and distinctness of character among our-
fielves, the roughness of the texture and the sharp angles
not being worn out by the artificial refinements of intel-
lect, or the frequent collision of social intercourse. It has
been argued on the other hand, indeed, that this circum-
stance makes against me: that the suppression of the

Comij Writers of the last Century, 209

grosser indications of absurdity ought to stimulate and
give scope to the ingenuity and penetration of the comic
writer who is to detect them; and that the progress of*
wit and humour ought to keep pace with critical distinc-
tions and metaphysical niceties. Some theorists, indeed,
have been sanguine enough to expect a regular advance
from grossness to refinement on the stage and in real life,
marked on a graduated scale of human perfectibility, and
ha^e been hence led to imagine that the best of our old co-
medies were no better than the coarse jests of a set of country
clowns — a sort of comedies bourgeoises, compared with the
admirable productions which might, but have not, been
written in our times. I must protest against this theory
altogether, which woiild go to degrade genteel comedy
from a high court lady into a literary prostitute. I do not
know what these persons mean by refinement in this
instance. Do they find none in Millamant and her morn-
ing dreams, in Sir Roger de Ooverley and his widow?
Did not Etherege, Wycherley, and Congreve, approach
tolerably near '

((

the ring

Of mimic statesmen and their merry king ?*'

Is there no distinction between an Angelica and a Miss
Prue : a Valentine, a Tattle, and a Ben ? Where, in the
annals of modem literature, shall we find anything more
refined, more deliberate, more abstracted in vice, than the
nobleman in Amelia ? Are not the compliments which
Pope paid to his friends equal in taste and elegance to any
which have been paid since? Are there no traits in
Sterne? Is not Richardson minute enough? Must we
part with Sophia Western and her muff, and Clarissa
Harlowe's " preferable regards " for the loves of the plants
and the triangles ? Or shall we say that the Berinthias
and Alitheas of former times were little rustics, because
they did not, like our modem belles, subscribe to circu*

p

'I

(

1

210 The English Comic Writers.

latmg libraries, read 'Beppo,' prefer 'Gertrude of
Wyoming ' to the ' Lady of the Lake/ or the ' Lady of the
La^e ' to ' Gertmde of Wyoming,' differ in their sentiments
on points of taste or systems of mineralogy, and deUyer
dissertations on the arts with Corinna of Italy? They
had something else to do and to talk about. They were
employed in reality, as we see them on the stage, in
setting off their charms to the greatest advantage, in mor-
tifying their rivals by the most pointed irony, and trifling
with their lovers with infinite address. The height of
comic elegance and refinement is not to be found in the
general diffusion of knowledge and civilization, which
tends to level and neutralise, but in the pride of individual
distinction, and the contrast between the oonflicting pre-
tensions of different ranks in society.

For this reason I conceive that the alterations, which
have taken place in conversation and dress, in consequence
of the change of manners in the same period, have been
by no means favourable to comedy. The present pre-
vailing style of conversation is not personal, but critical
and analytical. It consists almost entirely in the dis-
cussion of general topics, in ascertaining the merits of
authors and their works : and Congreve would be able to
derive no better hints from the conversations of our
toilettes or drawing-rooms for the exquisite raillery or
poignant repartee of his dialogues than from a deliberation
of the Boyal Society. In manner, the extreme simplicity
and graceful uniformity of modem dress, however favour-
able to the arts, has certainly stript comedy of one of its
richest ornaments and most expressive syiabols. The
sweeping pall and buskin, and nodding plume, were never
more serviceable to tragedy, than the enormous hoops and
stiff stays worn by the belles of former days were to the
intrigues of comedy. They assisted wonderfully in
heightening the mysteries of the passion, and adding to
the intricacy of the plot. Wycherley and Yanbrugh could

Comie Writers of the last Century. 211

not have spared the dresses of Vandyke. These strange,
fancy dresses, perverse disguises, and counterfeit shapes,
gave an agreeable scope to the imagination. ''That
sevenfold fence " was a sort of foil to the Inscionsness of
the dialogae, and a barrier against the sly encroachments
of double entendre. The greedy eye and bold hand of
indiscretion were repressed, which gave a greater license
to the tongue. The senses were not to be gratified in an
instant. Love was entangled in the folds of the swelling
handkerchief, and the desires might wander for ever roimd
the circumference of a quilted petticoat, or find a rich
lodging in the flowers of a damask stomacher. There was
room for years of patient contrivance, for a thousand
thoughts, schemes, conjectures, hopes, fears, and wishes.
There seemed no end of obstacles and delays ; to overcome
so many difficulties was the work of ages. A mistress'
was an angel, concealed behind whalebone, floimces, and
brocade. What an undertaking to penetrate through the
disguise ! What an impulse must it give to the blood,
what a keenness to the invention, what a volubility to the
tongue ! " Mr. Smirk, you are a brisk man," was then
the most significant commendation ; but now-a-days — a
woman can be hut undressed! Again, the character of
the fine gentleman is at present a little obscured on the
stage, nor do we immediately recognize it elsewhere, for
want of the formidable insignia of a bag-wig and sword.
Without these outward credentials, the public must not
only be unable to distinguish this character intuitively,
but it must be "almost afraid to know itself." The
present simple disguise of a gentleman is like the incognito
of kings. The opinion of others affects our opinion of
ourselves ; and we can hardly expect from a modern man
of fjEUshion that air of dignity and superior gracefulness of
carriage, which those must have assumed who were con-
scious that all eyes were upon them, and that their lofty
pretensions continually exposed them either to public

p 2

212 J%e English dmic Writers.

8Com or challenged public admiistian. A lord who shoold
take the wall of the plebeian passengers without a sword
bj his side would hardly haye his claim of precedence
acknowledged; nor conld he be supposed to have that
obsolete air of self-importance abont him, which shoidd
alone clear the pavement at his approach. It is cnrions
how an ingenious actor of the present day (Mr. Farren)
should play Lord Ogleby* so well as he does, haying
neyer seen anything of the sort in reality. A nobleman
in full costume, and in broad day, would be a phenomenon
like the lord mayor's coach. The attempt at getting up
genteel comedy at present is a sort of galyanic experiment,
a reyiyal of the dead.f

* A character in Grarrick and Golman's comedy of ' The Clan-
destine Marriage." The Farren here mentioned was the la^ Mr.
W. Farren of the Haymarket. — Ed.

t I have only to add, by way of explanation on this subject, the
following passage from the ' Characters of Shakspeare's Plays :'
" There is a certain stage of society in which people become con«
scions of their peculiarities and absurdities, affect to disguise what
they are, and set up pretensions to what they are not This gives
rise to a corresponding style of comedy, the object of which is to
detect the disguises of self-love, and to make reprisals on these
preposterous assumptions of vanity, by marking the contrast be-
tween the real and the affected character as severely as possible,
and denying to those who would impose on us for what they are not,
even the merit which they have. This is the comedy of artificial
life, of wit and satire, such as we see it in Congreve, Wycherley,
Yanbrugh, &c. To this succeeds a state of society from which the
same sort of affectation and pretence are banished by a greater
knowledge of the world, or by their successful exposure on the
stage ; and which by neutralizing the materials of comic character,
both natural and artificial, leaves no comedy at all — ^but the senti-
mentdl. Such is our modem comedy. There is a period in the pro-
gress of manners anterior to both these, in which the foibles and
follies of individuals are of nature's planting, not the growth of art
or study ; in which they are therefore unconscious of them them-
selves, or care not who knows them, if they can but have their whim
out ; and in which, as there is no attempt at imposition, the spec-
tators rather receive pleasure from humouring the inclinations of

Comic Writers of the last Century. 213

I have observed in a former Lecture, that the most
spirited era of our comic drama was that which reflected
the conversation, tone, and manners of the profligate, but
witty age of Charles II. With the graver and more
business-like turn which the Eevolution probably gave to
our minds, comedy stooped from her bolder and more
fantastic flights; and the ferocious attack made by the
nonjuring divine, Jeremy Collier, on the immorality and
profaneness of the plays then chiefly in vogue, nearly
frightened those unwarrantable liberties of wit and humour
from the stage, which were no longer countenanced at
court nor copied in the city. Almost the last of our
writers who ventured to hold out in the prohibited track,
was a female adventurer, Mrs. Centlivre, who seemed to
take advantage of the privilege of her sex, and to set at
defiance the cynical denunciations of the angry puritanical
reformist. Her plays have a provoking spirit and volatile
salt in them, which still preserves them from decay.
Congreve is said to have been jealous of their success at
the time, and that it was one cause which drove him in
disgust from the stage. If so, it was without any good
reason : for these plays have great and intrinsic merit in
them, which entitled them to their popularity (and it is
only spurious and undeserved popularity which should ex-
cite a feeling of jealousy in any well-regulated mind) : and
besides, their merit was of a kind entirely different from
his own. The 'Wonder' and the 'Busy Body' are pro-
perly comedies of intrigue. Their interest depends chiefly
on the intricate involution and artful denouSment of the
plot, which has a strong tincture of mischief in it, and the
wit is seasoned by the archness of the humour and sly
allusion to the most delicate points. They are plays
evidently written by a very clever woman, but still by a

the persons they laugh at, than ^wish to give them pain by exposing
their absurdity. This may be called the comedy of nature, and itJa
the comedy which we generally find-in Shakspearc." F. 25B.

214 The English Coinic Writtrs,

woman : for I hold, in spite of any fanciful theories to the
contrary, that there is a distinction discernible in the
minds of women as well as in their faces. The " Wonder '*
is one of the best of our acting plays. The passion of
jealousy in Don Felix is managed in snch a way as to
give as little offence as possible to the audience, for every
appearance combines to excite and confirm his worst
suspicions, while we, who are in the secret, laugh at his
groundless uneasiness and apprehensions. The ambignity
of the heroine's situation, which is like a continued prac-
tical equivoque, gives rise to a quick succession of causeless
alarms, subtle excuses, and the most hairbreadth 'scapes.
The scene near the end, in which Don Felix, pretending
to be drunk, forces his way out of Don Manuel's house,
who wants to keep him a prisoner by producing his mar-
riage contract in the shape of a pocket-pistol, with the
terrors and confusion into which the old gentleman is
thrown by this sort of argumentum ad hominem, is one of
the richest treats the stage affords, and calls forth in-
cessant peals of laughter and applause. Besides the two
principal characters (Violante and Don Felix), Lissardo
and Flippanta come in very well to carry on the under-
plot ; and the airs and graces of an amorous waiting-maid
and conceited man-servant, each copying after their master
and mistress, were never hit off with more natural volubility
or affected nonchalance than in this enviable couple. Lis-
sardo's playing off the diamond ring before the eyes of
his mortified Dulcinea, and aping his master's absent
manner while repeating — ^^'Eoast me these, Violante,"
as well as the jealous quarrel of the two waiting-maids,
which threatens to end in some very extraordinary dis-
coveries, are among the most amusing traits in this comedy.
Colonel Breton, the lover of Clara, is a spirited and
enterprising soldier of fortune ; and his servant Gibby's
imdaunted, incorrigible blundering, with a dash of
nationality in it, tells in a very edifying way. The ' Busy

1

Comtc Writers of the last Century. 215

Body ' is inferior, in the interest of the story and cha-
racters, to the ' Wonder ;' bnt it is full of bustle and
gaiety from beginning to end. The plot never stands
still ; the situations succeed one another like the changes
of machinery in a pantomime. The nice dovetailing of
the incidents and cross-reading in the situations supply *
the place of any great force of wit or sentiment. The
time for the entrance of each person on the stage is the
moment when they are least wanted, and when their
arrival makes either themselves or somebody else look as
foolish as possible. The laughableness of this comedy,
as well as of the ' Wonder,' depends on a brilliant series
of mistimed exits and entrances. Marplot is the whim-
sical hero of the piece, and a standing memorial of un-
meaning vivacity and assiduous impertinence.

The comedies of Steele were the first that were written
expressly with a view not to imitate the manners, but to
reform the morals of the age. The author seems to be
all the time on his good behaviour, as if writing a comedy
was no very creditable employment, and as if the ultimate
object of his ambition was a dedication to the queen.
Nothing can be better meant, or more inef&cient. It is
almost a misnomer to call them comedies ; they are rather
homilies ijx..dialogue, in which a number of very pretty
ladies and gentlemen discuss the fashionable topics of
gaming, of duelling, of seduction, of scandal, <&c., with a
sickly sensibility, that shows as little hearty aversion to
vice as sincere attachment to virtue. By not meeting the
question fairly on the ground of common experience, by
slubbering over the objections, and varnishing over the
answers, the whole distinction between virtue and vice (as
it appears in evidence in the comic drama) is reduced to \
verbal professions, and a mechanical, infantine goodness. ^
The sting is, indeed, taken out of what is bad ; but what
is good, at the same time, loses its manhood and nobility
* Original edition reads supplies. — Ed.

^

216 The Eaglish Comic Writers.

of nature by this enervating process. I am unwilling to

believe that the only difference between right and wrong

is mere cant or make-believe; and I imagine that the

advantage which the moral drama possesses over mere

/ theoretical precept or general declamation is this, that by

being left free to imitate nature as it is, and not being

referred to an ideal standard, it is its own voucher for the

/ truth of the inferences it draws, for its warnings, or its

/ examples ; that it brings out the higher, as well as lower

; principles of action, in the most striking and convincing

; points of view, satisfies us that virtue is not a mere

I shadow, clothes it with passion, imagination, reality and,

\ if I may so say, translates morality from the language of

^ theory into that of practice. But Steele, by introducing

the artificial mechanism of morals on the stage, and

making his characters act, not from individual motives

and existing circumstances the truth of which every one

must feel, but from vague topics and general rules the

truth of which is the very thing to be proved in detail,

has lost that fine 'vantage-ground which the stage lends to

virtue, takes away from it its best grace, the grace of

sincerity, and instead of making it a test of truth, has

made it an echo of the doctrine of the schools — ^and " the

one cries Mum^ while t'other cries Budget /"* The comic

writer, in my judgment then, ought to open the volume of

nature and the world for his living materials, and not

take them out of his ethical commonplace book ; for in

this way neither will throw any additional light upon the

other. In all things there is a division of labour ; and I

am as little for introducing the tone of the pulpit or

reading-desk on the stage, as for introducing plays and

interludes in church-time, according to the good old popish

practice. It was a part, indeed, of Steele's plan, " by the

politeness of his style and the genteelness of his expres-

* t

Merry Wives of Windsor/ v. 5. — Ed.

I

Com'ip Writers of the last Century. 217

£ions,"* to bring about a reconciliation between things
which he thought had hitherto been kept too far asunder,
to wed the graces to the yirtues, and blend pleasure with
profit. And in this design he succeeded admirably in his
' Tatler,' and some other works ; but in his comedies ho
has failed. He has confounded, instead of harmonising,
has' taken away its gravity from wisdom and its charm
from gaiety. It is not that in his plays we find " some
soul of goodness in things evil ;" bat they have no soul
either of good or bad. His 'Funeral' is as trite, as
tedious, and full of formal grimace, as a procession of
mutes and imdertakers. The characters are made either
affectedly good and forbearing, with "all the milk of
human kindness ;" or purposely bad and disgusting, for
the others to exercise their squeamish charities upon them.
The * Conscious Lovers ' is the best ; but that is far from^
good, with the exception of the scene between Mr. Thomas
and Phillis who are fellow-servants, and commence lovers
from being set to clean the window together. We are
here once more in the company of our old friend, Isaac
Eickerstaff, Esq. Indiana is as listless and as insipid
as a drooping figure on an Indian screen ; and Mr. Myrtle
and Mr. Bevil only just disturb the still life of the scene,
I am sorry that in this censure I should have Parson
Adams against me, who thought the * Conscious Lovers '
the only play fit for a Christian to see, and as good as a
sermon. For myself, I would rather have read, or heard
In'm read, one of his own manuscript sermons : and if the
volume which he left behind him in his saddle-bags was
to be had in print, for love or money, I would at any time
walk ten miles on foot only to get a sight of it.

Addison's * Drummer, or the Haunted House,' is a
pleasant farce enough, but adds nothing to our idea
of the author of the ' Spectator.'

Pope's joint afterpiece, called « An Hour after Marriage,'
was not a successful attempt. He brought into it "an
* See Mandeville's * Fable of the Bees.*

218 The English Comic Wriiers.

aUigitor BtofTd," which disconoeiied the ladies, and gare

just offienoe to the critics. Pope was too fuiidions for a

farce-writer; and yet the most ftstidions people, when

they step out of their regnlar routine, are apt to hecome

/the grossest. The smallest ofEsnces against prohability or

' decoerom are, to their hahitnal scrapnlonsnees, as nn-

'. pardonable as the greatest. This was the rock on which

Pope probably split. The affiur was, however, hushed

np ; and he wreaked his discreet yengeance at leisore on

the '' odious endeavonrs" and more odious saccess of

Colley Gibber in the line in which he had failed.

Ghiy's ' Whai-d'ye-call-it ' is not one of his happiest
things. His ' Polly ' is a complete failnre, which indeed
is the common fette of second parts. If the original Polly,
in the * Beggar's Opera,' had not had more winning ways
with her, she would hardly have had so many Countesses
for representatives as she has had, from her fmst appear*
ance np to the present moment.

Fielding was a comic writer, as well as a novelist ; but
his comedies are very inferior to his novels : they are par-
ticularly deficient both in plot and character. The only
excellence which they have is that of the style, which is
the only thing in which his novels are deficient. The only
dramatic pieces of Fielding that retain pos^ssion of the
stage are, the ' Mock Doctor ' (a tolerable translation from
Moli^re's Medecin malgre lui), and his * Tom Thumb,' a
very admirable piece of burlesque. The absurdities and
bathos of some of our celebrated tragic writers could
hardly be credited, but for the notes at the bottom of this
preposterous medley of bombast, containing his authorities
and the parallel passages. Dryden, Lee and Shadwell
make no very shining figure there. Mr. Liston makes a
better figure in the text. His Lord Grizzle is prodigious.
What a name, and what a person I It has been said of
this ingenious actor, that " he is very great in Liston ;"
but he is even greater in Lord Grizzle. What a wig is
that he wears I How flighty, flaunting, and fantastical !

Comic Writers of tlie lad Century, 219*

Not " like those hanging locks of young Apollo," nor like
the serpent-hair of the Furies of ^schylus; but as
troublous, though not as tragical as t^e one — as imposing,
though less classical than the other. '^ Que terriblea sent
ces cheveux gris" might be applied to Lord Grizzle's most
valiant and magnanimous curls. This sapient courtier's
" fell of hair does at a dismal treatise rouse and stir as life
were in't." His wits seem flying away with the disorder
of his flowing locks, and to sit as loosely on our hero's
head as the caul of his peruke. What a significant
vacancy in his open eyes and mouth ! what a listlessness
in his limbs! what an abstraction of all thought or
purpose I With what an headlong impulse of enthusiasm
he throws himself across the stage when he is going to be
married, crying, "Hey for Doctors' Commons," as if
the genius of folly had taken whole-length possession of
his person ! And then his dancing is equal to the dis-
« covery of a sixth sense — ^which is certainly very different
from common seme I If this extraordinary personage cuts
a great figure in his life, he is no less wonderful in his
death and burial. " From the sublime to the ridiculous
there is but one step ;" and this character would almost
seem to prove, that there is but one step from the
ridiculous to the sublime, i Lubin Log, however in-
imitable in itself, is itself an imitation of something
existing elsewhere; but the Lord Grizzle of this truly
original actor is a pure invention of his own. His Caper, in
the ' Widow's Choice,' can alone dispute the palm with it in
incoherence and volatility ; for that, too, " is high fan-
tastical," almost as full of emptiness, in as grand a gusto of
insipidity, as profoundly absurd, as elaborately nonsensical t
Why does not Mr. Listen play in some of Moliere's farces ?
I heartily wish that the author of 'Love, Law, and
Physic,'* would launch him on the London boards

♦ James Kenney. First performed at Covent Garden, Nov. 20,
1812.— Ed.

220 The English Comic Writers. ^

in Monsiear Jouidain, or Moncdeiir Ponrceaugnac. Tlie
genius of Liston and Moliere together —

** Mast bid a gay defiance to mischanoe."

Mr. Liston is an actor hardly belonging to the present
age. Had he lived, nnfortonatelj for ns, in the time of
CoUey Gibber, we should have seen what a splendid niche
he would have given him in his ' Apology.'

Gibber is the hero of the ' Dunciad ;' but ^it cannot be
said of him, that he was ^by merit raised to that bad
eminence." He was pert, not dull; a coxcomb, not a
blockhead; vain, bnt not malicions. Pope's unqualified
abuse of him was mere spleen : and the most obvious pro-
vocation to it seems to have been an excess of flippant
vivacity in the constitution of Gibber. That Gibber's
'Birthday Odes' were dull, is true; but this was not
peculiar to him. It is an objection which may be made
equally to Shadwell's, to Whitehead's, to Warton's, to
Pye's, and to all others, except those which of late years
have not been written ! In his ' Apology for his own Life,'
Gibber is a most amusing biographer : happy in his own
good opinion, the best of all others ; teeming with animal
spirits, and uniting the self-suf&ciency of youth with the
garrulity of age. His account of his waiting as a page
behind the chair of the old Duchess of Malborough, at the
lime of the Bevolution, who was then in the bloom of
youth and beauty, which seems to have called up in him
the secret homage of *' distant, enthusiastic, respectful
love," fifty years after, and the compliment he pays to her
(then in her old age), " a great-grandmother without grey
bairs," is as delightful as anything in fiction or romance,
and is the evident origin of Mr. Burke's celebrated
apostrophe to the Queen of France.* Nor is the political
confession of faith which he makes on this occasion
without a suitable mixture of vanity and sincerity: the
vanity we may ascribe to the player, the sincerity to- the
* This was probably meant only half in earnest. — ^En.

1

Comic Writers of the last Century . 221

politician. The self^omplacency with which he talks of
his own success, both as a player and a writer, is not
greater than the candour and cordiality with which he
does heaped justice to the merits of his theatrical con-
temporaries and predecessors. He brings down the history
of the stage, either by the help of observation or tradition,
from, the time of Shakspeare to his own; and quite
dazzles the reader with a constellation of male and female,
of tragic and comic, of past and present excellence. He
gives portraits at full length of KynastonJ of Betterton, of
Booth, of Estcourt, of Penkethman and Dogget, of Mohun
and Wilks, of Nokes and Sandford, of Mrs. Montford,
of Mrs. Oldfield, of Mrs. Barry and Mrs. Bracegirdle, and
of others of equal note ; with delectable criticisms on their
several performances, and anecdotes of t}ieir private lives,
with scarcely a single particle of jealousy or ill-nature, or
any other motive than to expatiate in the delight of
talking of the ornaments of his art, and a wish to share
his pleasure with the reader. 1 wish 1 could quote some
of these theatrical sketches ; but the time presses. The
latter part of his work is less entertaining when he
becomes Manager, and gives us an exact statement of his
squabbles with the Lord Chamberlain, and the expense of
his ground-rent, his repairs, his scenery, and his dresses.
In his plays, his personal character perhaps predominates
too much over the inventiveness of his Muse ; but so far
from being dull, he is everywhere light, fluttering, and
airy. His pleasure in himself made him desirous to
please ; but his fault was, that he was too soon satisfied
with what he did, that his indolence or want of thought
led him to indulge in the vein that flowed from him with-
most ease, and that his vanity did not allow him to distin-
guish between what he did best and worst. His ' Careless
Husband ' is a very elegant piece of agreeable, thoughtless
writing; and the incident of Lady Easy throwing her
handkerchief over her husband, whom she finds asleep in

222 The English Qmic Writers.

a obair by the side of her waiting-woman, was an

admirable contriyance, taken, as he informs ns, from real

life. His ' Double Gkdlant,' which has been lately revived,

though it cannot rank in the first, may take its place in

the second or third class of comedies. It abounds in

character, bustle, and stage effect. It belongs to what

/ may be called the composite style ; and very happily mixes

( up the comedy of intfTgue,'*l8ucli as we see it in Mrs.

^ Centlivre's Spanish plots, with a tolerable share of the wit

V. and spirit of Gongreve and Yanbmgh. As there is a good

deal of wit, there is a spice of wickedness in this play,

which was a privilege of the good old style of comedy

not altogether abandoned in Gibber's time. The luscious

vein of tiie dialogue is stopped short in many of the scenes

of the revived play, though not before we perceive its

•object —

** In hidden mazes running,

With wanton haste and giddy cunning."

These imperfect hints of double meanings, however, pass
off without any marks of reprobation ; for unless they arc
insisted on, or made pretty broad, the audience, from
being accustomed to the cautious purity of the modem
drama, are not very expert in deciphering the equivocal
allusion, for which they are not on the look-out. To
what is this increased nicety owing? Was it that vice,
from being formerly less common (though more fashion-
able) was less catching than at present ? The first infer-
ence is by no means in our favour : for though I think
that the grossness of manners prevailing in our fashionable
comedies was a direct transcript of the manners of the
court at the time, or in the period immediately preceding, -
yet the same grossness of expression and allusion existed
long before, as in the plays of Shakspeare and Ben Jonson,
when there was not this grossness of manners, and it has
of late years been gradually refining away. There is a
certain grossness or freedom of expression, which may

Comie Writers of the last Century. 223

arise as often from Tmsnspecting simplicity as from avowed
profligacy. Whatever may be our progress either in virtue
or vice since the age of Charles II., certain it is, that our
maiuierB are not mended since the time of Elizabeth and
Oharles L Is it, then, that vice was formerly a thing
more to be wondered at than imitated ? that behind the
rigid barriers of religion and morality it might be
exposed freely, without the danger of any serious practical
consequences : whereas now that the safeguards of whole-
some authority and prejudice are removed, we seem afraid
to trust our eyes or ears with a single situation or expres-
sion of a loose tendency, as if the mere mention of
licentiousness implied a conscious approbation of it, and
the extreme delicacy of our moral sense would be
debauched by the biure suggestion of the possibility of
vice? But I shall not take upon me to answer this
question. The characters in the 'Double Gallant' are
well kept up : At- All and Lady Dainty are the two most
prominent characters in this comedy, and those into which
Oibber has put most of his own nature and genius. They
are the essence of active impertinence and fashionable
frivoliiy. Gibber, in short, though his name has been
handed down to us as a bye-word of impudent pretension
and impenetrable dulness by the classical pen of his
accomplished rival,* who, unfortunately, did not admit of
any merit beyond the narrow circle of wit and friendship
in which he himself moved, was a gentleman and a scholar
of the old school ; a man of wit and pleasantry in con-
versation, a diverting mimic, an , excellent actor, an
admirable dramatic critic, and one of the best comic
writers of his age. His works, instead of being a captd
mortuum of literature, had a great deal of the spirit with
a little too much of the froth. His ^ Nonjuror ' was taken
from Moliere's *Tartuffe,' and has been altered to the
'Hypocrite.' 'Love's Last Shift' appears to have been

♦ Pope.— Ed.

224 The English Comic Writers,

liis own favourite; and he received the compliments of
Sir John Vanbrugh and old Mr. Southern upon it. The
latter said to him, *^ Toung man, your play is a good one ;
and it will succeed, if you do not spoil it by your acting."
His plays did not always take equally. It is ludicrous to
hear him complaining of the ill success of one of them,
'Love in a Kiddle,' a pastoral comedy, "of a nice
morality," and well-spoken sentiments, which he wrote in
opposition to the * Beggar's Opera,' at the time when its
worthless and vulgar rival was carrying everything
triumphantly before it. Gibber brings this with much
pathetic naivetS, as an instance of the lamentable want of
taste in the town !

The 'Suspicious Husband' by Hoadley, the 'Jealous
Wife' by Colman, and the 'Clandestine Marriage' by
Colman and Garrick, are excellent plays of the middle
style of comedy : which are formed rather by judgment
and selection, than by any original vein of genius ; and
have all the parts of a good comedy in degree, without
having any one prominent or to excess. The character
of Kanger, in the 'Suspicious Husband,' is only a
variation of those of Farquhar, of the sam^ class as his
Sir Harry Wildair and others, without equal spirit. A
great deal of the story of the ' Jealous Wife ' is borrowed
from Fielding, but so faintly, that the resemblance is
hardly discernible till you are apprised of it. The
'Jealous Wife' herself is, however, a dramatic chef-
d^cBuvre, and worthy of being acted as often and better
than it is. Sir Harry Beagle is a true fox-hunting
English squire. The 'Clandestine Marriage' is nearly
without a fault ; and has some lighter theatrical graces,
which I suspect Garrick threw into it. Canton is, I should
think, his ; though this classification of him among the
ornamental parts of the play may seem whimsical.
Garrick's genius does not appear to have been equal to
the construction of a solid drama ; but he could retouch

Comic Writers of the last Century. 225

and embellisli with great gaiety and knowledge of the
technicalities of his art. Garrick not only produced joint-
pieces and after-pieces, but often set off the plays of his
friends and contemporaries with the garnish, the sauce
piguarUey of prologues and epilogues, at which he had an
admirable knack. The elder Colman's translation of
' Terence,' I may here add, has always been considered
by good judges as an equal proof of the author's know-
ledge of the Latin language and taste in his own.

BickerstafiTs plays and comic operas are continually
acted : they come under the class of mediocrity, generally
speaking. Their popularity seems to be chiefly owing to
the unaffected ease and want of pretension with which
they are written, with a certain humorous nawetS in the
lower characters, and an exquisite adaptation of the
music to the songs. His ' Love in a Village ' is one of
the most delightful comic operas on the stage. It is
truly pastoral ; and the sense of music hovers over the
very scene like the breath of morning. In his alteration
of the ' Tartuffe ' he has spoiled the Hypocrite, but he has
added Mawworm.

Mrs. Cowley's comedy of the 'Belles' Stratagem,'
* Who's the Dupe,' and others, are of the second or third
class: they are rather rifo/dmenti of the characters,
incidents and materials of former writers, got up with
considerable liveliness and ingenuity, than original com-
positions with marked qualities of their own.

Goldsmith's * Good-natured Man' is inferior to *She
Stoops to Conquer, and even this last play, with aU its
shifting vivacity, is rather a sportive and whimsical
effusion of the author's fancy, a delightful and delicately
managed caricature, than a genuine comedy.

Murphy's plays of *A11 in the Wrong' and 'Know
Your Own Mind,' are admirably written, with sense,
spirit and conception of character ; but without any great
effect of the humorous, or that truth of feeling which

Q

226 The English Comic Writers,

distinguishes the boundary between the absurdities of
natural character and the gratuitous fictions of the poet's
pen. The heroes of these two plays, MiUamour and Sir
Benjamin Constant, are too ridiculous in their caprices
to be tolerated, except in farce ; and yet their follies are
BO flimsy, so motiveless, and finespun, as not to be intel-
ligible, or to have any effect in their only proper sphere.
£oth his principal pieces are said to have suffered by
their similarity, first to * Colman's Jealous Wife,' and next
to the ' School for Scandal,' though in both cases he had
the undoubted priority. It is hard that the fate of pla-
giarism should attend upon originality, yet it is clear
that the elements of the 'School for Scandal' are not
sparingly scattered in Murphy's comedy of ' Know your
own Mind,' which appeared before the latter play, only
to be eclipsed by it. This brings me to speak of Sheri-
dan.

Mr. Sheridan has been justly called " a dramatic star
of the first magnitude;" and indeed, among the comic
writers of the last century, he "shines like Hesperus
among the lesser lights." He has left four several dramas
behind him, all different or of different kinds, and all ex-
cellent in their way ; the ' School for Scandal,' the
* Eivals,' the ' Duenna,' and the * Critic.' The attraction
of this last piece is, however, less in the mock tragedy
rehearsed, than in the dialogue of the comic scenes and
in the character of Sir Fretful Plagiary, which is supposed
to have been intended for Cumberland. K some of the
characters in the ' School for Scandal ' were contained in
Murphy's comedy of ' Know your own Mind ' (and cer-
tainly some of Dashwoud's detached speeches and satirical
sketches are written with quite as firm and masterly a
hand as any of those given to the members of the scan-
dalous club, Mrs. Candour or Lady Sneerwell), yet they
were buried in it for want of grouping and relief, like the
colours of a well-drawn picture simk in the canvas.

Comic Writers of the last Century. 227

Sheridan brought them out, and exhibited them in all
their glory. K that gem, the character of Joseph Surface,
was Murphy's, the splendid and more valuable setting
was Sheridan's. He took Murphy's Malvil from his lurk-
ing place in the closet, and ''dragged the struggling
monster into day" upon the stage. That is, he gave
interest, life and action, or, in other words, its dramatic
being, to the mere conception and written specimens of a
character. This is the merit of Sheridan's comedies, that
everything in them tdla ; there is no labour in vain.
His Comic Muse does not go about prying into obscure
comers, or collecting idle curiosities, but shows her laugh-
ing face, and points to her rich treasure — the follies of
mankind. She is garlanded and crowned with roses and
vine-leaves. Her eyes sparkle with delight, and her heart
runs over with good-natured malice. Her step is firm and
light, and her ornaments consummate I The * School for
Scandal ' is, if not the most original, perhaps the most
finished and faultless comedy which we have. When it
is acted, you hear people all aroimd you exclaiming,
"Surely it is impossible for anything to be cleverer."
The scene in which Charles sells all the old family pictures
but his imcle's, who is the purchaser in disguise, and that
of the discovery of Lady Teazle when the screen falls, are
among the happiest and most highly wrought that comedy,
in its wide and brilliant range, can boast. Besides the
wit and ingenuity of this play, there is a genial spirit of
frankness and generosity about it, that relieves the heart \
as well as clears the lungs. It professes a faith in the'*\
natural goodness as well as habitual depravity of human j
nature. While it strips off the mask of hypocrisy, it in-
spires a confidence between man and man. As often as
it is acted, it must serve to clear the air of that low, creep-
ing, pestilent fog of cant and mysticism, which threatens
to confound every native impulse or honest conviction,
in the nauseous belief of a perpetual lie and the laudable

228 2%e English Comic Writers.

profession of systematic hypocrisy. The chaa*acter of
Lady Teazle is not well made out by the author ; nor has
it been well represented on the stage since the time of
Miss Farren. The * Eivals ' is a play of even more action
and incident, but of less wit and satire than the ^ School
fbr Scandal.' It is as good as a novel in the reading, and
has the broadest and most palpable effect on the stage.
If Joseph Surface and Charles have a smack of Tom Jones
and Blifil in their moral constitution, Sir Anthony Ab-
solute and Mrs. Malaprop remind us of honest Matthew
Bramble and his sister Tabitha in their tempers and
dialect. Acres is a distant descendant of Sir Andrew
Aguecheek. It must be confessed of this author, as
Falstaff says of some one, that " he had damnable iteration
in him T' The ^ Duenna ' is a perfect work of art. It lias
the utmost sweetness and point. The plot, the characters,
the dialogue, are all complete in themselves, and they are
all his own ; and the songs are the best that ever were
written, except those in the ^ Beggar's Opera.' They have
a joyous spirit of intoxication in them, and a strain of the
most melting tenderness. Compare the softness of that
beginning,

**Had I heart for &lsehood framed/'

with the spirited defiance to Fortune in the lines,

" Half thy malice youth could bear,
And the rest a bmnper drown.*'

It would have been too much for the author of these
elegant and classic productions not to have had some
drawbacks on his felicity and fame. But even the ap-
plause of nations and the favour of princes cannot always
be enjoyed with impunity. Sheridan was not only an
excellent dramatic writer, but a first-rate parliamentary
speaker. His characteristics as an orator were manly,
imperverted good sense, and keen irony. Wit, which has
been thought a two-edged weapon, was by him always

Comio Writers of tJie last Century, 229

employed on the same side of the question — ^I think, on
the right one. His set and more laboured speeches, as^
that on the Begiun*s affairs, were proportionally abortive
and unimpressive : but no one was equal to him in reply-
ing, on the spur of the moment, to pompous absurdity,
and unravelling the web of flimsy sophistry. He was
the last accomplished debater of the House of Commons.
His character will, however, soon be drawn by one who
has all the ability, and every inclination to do him justice ;.
who knows how to bestow praise and to deserve it ; by
one who is himself an ornament of private and of public
life ; a satirist, beloved by his friends ; a wit and a patriot
to boot ; a poet, and an honest man.*

Macklin's ' Man of the World ' has one powerfully writ-
ten character, that of Sir Pertinax Macsycophant, but it
required Cooke's acting to make it thoroughly effectual.

Mr. Holcroft, in his * Bead to Euin,' set the example
of that style of comedy, in which the slang phrases of
jockey noblemen and the humours of the four-in-hand
club are blended with the romantic sentiments of distressed
damsels and phHosophic waiting-maids, and in which he
has been imitated by the most successful of our living
writers, unless we make a separate class for the school of
Cumberland, who was almost entirely devoted to the
comedie larmoyante, and who, passing from the light, volatile
spirit of his ' West-Indian ' to the mawkish sensibility of
the ' Wheel of Fortune,' linked the Muse of English comedy
to the genius of German tragedy, where she has since
remained, like Christabel fallen asleep in the Witch's
arms, and where I shall leave her, as I have not the poet's
privilege to break the spell.

There are two other writers whom I have omitted to
mention, but not forgotten : they are our two immortal
farce- writers, the authors of the * Mayor of Garratt 'f and

* Leigh Hunt. — Ed.

t First performed at Covent Garden in July, 1763. Mr. Hazlitt
may ha?e seen it at the same house in June, 1817. — Ed.

230 The English Comic Writers.

the ' Agreeable Surprise.' * K Foote has been called oar
English Aristophanes, O'Eeeffe might well be called our
English Moliere. The scale of the modem writer wa&
smaller, but the spirit is the same. In light, careless
laughter, and pleasant exaggerations of the humorous, we
have had no one equal to him. There is no labour or
contrivance in his scenes, but the drollery of his subject
seems to strike irresistibly upon his fsuicy, and run away
with his discretion as it does with ours. His Cowslip
and Lingo are Touchstone and Audrey reviyed. He
is himself a Modem Antique. His fancy has all the
quaintness and extravagance of the old writers, with the
ease and lightness which the modems arrogate to them-
selves. All his pieces are delightful, but the ' Agreeable
Surprise ' is the most so. There are in this some of the
most felicitous blunders in situation and character that
can be conceived; and in Lingo's superb replication,
'* A scholar ! I was a master of scholars," he has hit the
height of the ridiculous. Foote had more dry, sarcastic
humour, and more knowledge of the world. His farces
are bitter satires, more or less personal, as it happened.
Mother Cole, in the ^ Minor,' and Mr. Smirk the Auctioneer,
in ' Taste,' with their coadjutors, are rich cut-and-come-
again, ** pleasant, though wrong." But the * Mayor of
Garratt' is his magnum opus in this line. Some comedies
are long farces : this farce is a comedy in little. It is
also one of the best acted fiEirces that we have. The acting
of Dowton and Bussell, in Major Sturgeon and Jerry
Sneak, cannot be too much praised : Foote himself would
have been satisfied with it. The strut, the bluster, the
hollow swaggering, and turkey-cock swell of the Major ;
and Jerry's meekness, meanness, folly, good-nature, and
hen-pecked air, are assuredly done to the life. The latter

* First performed, I believe, at the Haymarket, Sept 3, 1781.
Mr. Hazlitt perhaps saw it acted at Covent Garden in June, 1818i
—Ed.

Comic Writers of the last Century. 231

character is even better than the former, which is saying
a bold word. Dowton's art is only an imitation of art,
of an affected or assumed character ; but in Enssell's Jerry
you see the very soul of nature, in a fellow that is " pigeon-
livered and lacks gall," laid open and anatomized. You
can see that hid heart is no bigger than a pin, and his
head as soft as a pippin. His whole aspect is chilled and
frightened, as if he had been dipped in a pond ; and yet
he looks as if he would like to be snug and comfortable,
if he durst. He smiles as if he would be friends with
you upon any terms; and the tears come in his eyes
because you will not let him. The tones of his voice are
prophetic as the cuckoo's under-song. His words are
made of water-gruel. The scene in which he tries to
make a confidant of the Major is great ; and his song of
'Bobinson Crusoe' as melancholy as the island itself.
The reconciliation-scene with his wife, and his exclama-
tion over her, " to think that I should make my Molly
veep r are pathetic, if the last stage of human infirmity is
so. This farce appears to me to be both moral and en-
tertaining ; yet it does not take. It is considered as an
unjust satire on the city, and the country at large ; and
there is a very frequent repetition of the word " nonsense "
in the house, during the performance. Mr. Dov^ton was
even hissed, either from the upper boxes or gallery, in
his speech recounting the marching of his corps " from
Brentford to Ealing, and from Ealing to Acton;'' and
several persons in the pit, who thought the whole lowy
were for going out. This shows well for the progress of
civilization. I suppose the manners described in the
' Mayor of Garratt ' have, in the last forty years, become
obsolete, and the characters ideal: we have no longer
either hen-pecked or brutal husbands, or domineering
wives ; the Miss Molly JoUops no longer wed Jerry
Sneaks, or admire the brave Major Sturgeons on the other
side of Temple-bar ; all our soldiers have becpme heroes,

232 Ihe EurjliA Comic Writers.

sod oar magistntes respectable ; aiid the fkroe cf life is
o'er.

One moie oanie, and I hare done. It is that of Peter
Pindar. The hiaftoriaa of Sir Joseph Banks and the
Emperor of Moroooo, of the POgrims and the Peas, of
the Bojal Academj, and of Mr. Whithread's hiewing-
Tat, the hard in fdiom i^ nation and the king delighted,
is old and hlind, bat still meny and wise : — remembering
how he has made the world langh in his time, and not
repenting of the mirth he has giren ; with an involmitaiy
anile lighted np at the mad pranks cf his Mnse, and the
hicky hits of his pen — ^ £unt picture of those flashes of
his spirit that were wont to set the table in a roar;" like
his own Expiring Taper, bright and fitfnl to the last;
tagging a rhyme or conning his own epitaph ; and waiting
for the last summons, Gbatsful and Cohtestkd !*

I have thus gone throngh the history of that part of
onr literatnre which I had proposed to myself to treat of.
I have only to add by way of explanation, that in some
few parts I had anticipated myself in fogitive or perio-
dical publications ;| and I thought it better to repeat what
I had already stated to the best of my ability, than alter
it for the worse. These parte bear, however, a yeiy small
proportion to the whole; and I have used such diligence
and care as I could, in adding to them whatever appeared
necessary to complete the general view of the subject, or
make it (as far as lay in my power) interesting to others.

* ThiB ingenious and popular writer is since dead. [Wolcott died
Jan. 14, 1819.— Ed.]
t The 'Champion,' * Examiner,' and • Morning Chronicle/

VJSTXa : PBUrCEO BY WILLIAM CL0WB8 AND 80NS, STAUFORO STSBET

AND CHABIKO CBOfiS.

I